Indosat brings 5G to Samarinda, its sixth 5G city in Kalimantan-Sulawesi region
The carrier frames the launch around smart city, IoT and MSME digitalization in the IKN-supporting city, with media speed tests showing 747 Mbps downstream.
Indosat has officially launched 5G services in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, making it the sixth city in the carrier's Kalimantan-Sulawesi-Maluku-Papua region after Balikpapan, Makassar, Pontianak, Banjarmasin and Manado. Media speed tests at the launch recorded 747 Mbps downstream and 46.8 Mbps upstream. The carrier positioned the launch around smart city services, IoT deployments and digitalization of micro, small and medium enterprises rather than consumer bandwidth alone, a framing aimed at the city's role in supporting the new capital.
The expansion sits within a broader network push: on its third-quarter earnings call, the company said its 5G network now covers 75 cities with roughly 19,500 sites, reaching about 22 percent of the population, with 5G capital expenditure of Rp9.7 trillion in the first nine months of 2026 alongside Rp10.3 trillion directed at AI cloud capacity. Samarinda and neighboring Balikpapan are expected to see growing local-government demand for digital services as capital-region infrastructure spending continues.