Communication and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate said several cellular base transceiver stations (BTS) remained out of service due to power cuts by state-owned electricity firm PLN in response to extensive flooding in Greater Jakarta.
ellular services from a number of telecommunication providers remained disrupted in several areas on Thursday following heavy rains and flooding that have gripped Greater Jakarta since Tuesday night.
Communication and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate said several cellular base transceiver stations (BTS) had been out of service since Wednesday due to power cuts by state-owned electricity firm PLN in response to the flooding.
Read also: Power cut to 724 areas as massive floods hit Jakarta
“By Wednesday night, most customers were able to use cellular services despite [power cuts] because the BTSs had backup power and providers deployed mobile backup power and portable generators,” Johnny said.
“On Thursday, telecommunication services were once again disrupted because backup power only lasted a few hours and cellular operators were finding it difficult to access BTS locations due to the flooding.”
Telkomsel, XL, Indosat and Hutchison 3 Indonesia have reported that several of their BTS sites remain down and that they have sent technical teams to the sites to restore power with portable generators.
Smartfren and Net1 have managed to deploy backup power to all their affected BTS sites, which are all operational as of the time of writing.
Johnny said the ministry would continue to monitor telecommunication networks and would work with telecommunication providers to get cellular services back to normal. (kmt/kes)
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