Telkom and Merah Putih: capacity with a backup role

Telkom’s satellite fleet developed through successive spacecraft rather than one permanent machine. Telkom-3S and the original Merah Putih are distinct members of that history. Telkom documented Merah Putih’s launch in August 2018 and described its role in reaching locations poorly served by terrestrial infrastructure. Merah Putih is also known as Telkom 4; Merah Putih 2 is a later spacecraft, not a second name for the same satellite.

The operator’s annual report separates Merah Putih 2’s February 2024 launch from its March 27, 2025 start of operations. That gap illustrates the importance of orbit raising, checks and service preparation. A public launch announcement and an operating fleet entry answer different questions. Preserve both dates when explaining the mission instead of silently replacing one with the other.

In September 2025, Telkomsat described preparing satellite backup links during disruption to an eastern Indonesian submarine cable system. Its account included Merah Putih 2 and low-Earth-orbit technology among the available approaches. The example shows how satellite and cable networks can complement one another. It does not establish that every affected customer immediately received their previous speed or that every planned restoration step had already happened.

Imagine a fictional backup route able to carry 80 megabits per second while four sites each request 30. Combined demand is 120 megabits per second, exceeding the route by 40. Equal sharing would provide 20 to each site under a simplified model. An operator might instead prioritize particular services, but cannot promise all four their full requested rates simultaneously without more capacity or reduced demand.

A backup link has a capacity budget

A backup plan needs more than an orbiting transponder — open definition. Terminals must be available and correctly configured, local power must survive, and traffic must reach the wider network. If primary and backup paths depend on the same failed power supply or downstream router, changing the transmission medium may not restore the service. Redundancy is useful when it addresses the failure that actually occurred.

Evaluate a communications program using the workload it must support. A short text message, an interactive call and a large file transfer place different demands on delay, capacity and continuity. Telkom’s successive satellites show an evolving infrastructure role, while the cable-disruption example explains why a smaller but available route can still be valuable. The practical question is which essential tasks can continue, for whom, and under what measured conditions.