If you live in a big city, you might see the “5G” icon on your phone now and then. But for most Indonesians, 5G is still rare. According to the GSMA, only about 10% of Indonesia’s population was covered by 5G in 2025, and just 4% of mobile connections used it.

Indonesia’s geography makes this tough: more than 17,000 islands, mountains, forests, and long stretches of sea. Building cell towers everywhere is slow and expensive. That’s why the country is betting on two things at once: new radio frequencies for 5G, and powerful satellites like Nusantara Lima. Here’s what’s happening, how these technologies differ, and why connectivity is a big field for future engineers.

What’s Happening

In an August 2026 report covered by Katadata, the GSMA projected that Indonesia’s 5G population coverage will grow from 10% in 2025 to 32% by 2030. It also found that while only 2% of people live outside mobile network coverage, about 21% live in covered areas but still don’t use the internet, a gap caused by things like device costs and digital skills.

One reason 5G has been slow is spectrum, the radio frequencies networks use. According to Opensignal, Indonesia can’t use the 3.5 GHz band that most Asia-Pacific countries rely on for 5G, because it’s still occupied by satellite services. To help, the government auctioned the 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands in 2026. On July 14, 2026, the results became final, with Telkomsel, Indosat, and XLSMART all winning frequencies.

Meanwhile, satellites are filling gaps from above. Nusantara Lima, operated by Indonesian company Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN), launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on September 11, 2025. Built by Boeing, it offers more than 160 Gbps of capacity and covers Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It was scheduled to begin service on April 1, 2026, working alongside the earlier SATRIA-1 satellite. “This satellite will empower communities, schools, and businesses that have never had reliable access,” said PSN CEO Adi Rahman Adiwoso.

The Tech Behind It: 5G vs Satellites

5G is a mobile network technology that sends data over radio waves between your phone and nearby cell towers. Different frequencies behave differently. Low bands like 700 MHz travel far and pass through walls well, which makes them great for wide coverage. Higher bands like 2.6 GHz or 3.5 GHz carry much more data but don’t travel as far, so they need more towers.

Satellites take a different approach. Nusantara Lima sits in geostationary orbit, about 35,000 km above the equator, where it moves at the same speed as the Earth’s rotation and appears fixed in the sky. One satellite can cover a huge area, including remote islands where building towers doesn’t make sense. The trade-off is distance: signals take longer to travel, so latency is higher than on land networks. Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites fly much closer to reduce that delay, but need many satellites to cover the globe.

In practice, the two work best together. Satellites can connect a remote village’s school or a local cell tower back to the internet, while 5G and 4G deliver that connection to people’s phones. The GSMA also pointed to newer “direct-to-device” technology, where satellites connect straight to ordinary phones, as a promising option for remote and maritime areas.

What It Means for Future Engineers

Connecting more than 17,000 islands is one of the biggest engineering challenges in Indonesia, and it won’t be solved by one technology. Operators will need engineers to plan and build 5G networks on the new frequencies, while satellite companies need people who understand antennas, ground stations, and network management.

These jobs combine hardware, software, and networking. Engineers design the radio equipment and the embedded systems inside it, write the software that routes traffic and balances capacity, and keep networks secure. Nusantara Lima, for example, can dynamically move its capacity to where demand is highest, which is a software and systems problem as much as a space one.

Better connectivity also unlocks everything else: online learning in remote schools, telemedicine, smart farming, and IoT sensors in places that were once offline. Engineers who understand networks will help decide how quickly those benefits reach every part of the country.

Key Takeaways

Only about 10% of Indonesians were covered by 5G in 2025, and the GSMA expects that to reach 32% by 2030. New 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz frequencies, finalized in July 2026 for Telkomsel, Indosat, and XLSMART, should help, while the Nusantara Lima satellite adds more than 160 Gbps of capacity for hard-to-reach areas. Closing the connectivity gap will take both towers and satellites, and the engineers who can make them work together.

Want to help connect every corner of Indonesia? The Computer Engineering program at BINUS University builds your skills in networks, embedded systems, and communication technology. Explore the program and start engineering a more connected future.

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