• Papua's communications agency added temporary internet capacity after crowds at the Lake Sentani Festival slowed mobile service
  • Three IndiBiz broadband modems rated at up to 300Mbps each supported public hotspots, cashless payments and live streaming

The fact

Papua's provincial communications and informatics agency said on 6 September that it added temporary internet capacity at the Lake Sentani Festival after the concentration of visitors slowed mobile service. Working with Telkom Indonesia's IndiBiz service, the agency used three broadband modems, each rated at up to 300Mbps, and distributed traffic across them through load balancing.

The connection supported free public hotspots, cashless transactions and live streaming during the event. Papua's provincial government said more than 15,000 people attended the festival closing. The three modem ratings should not be added together and described as a 900Mbps service: the agency did not publish measured aggregate throughput, and the deployment was temporary rather than a permanent expansion of the local network.

The assessment

Festival crowds create short, concentrated demand that can slow normal mobile service even when day-to-day capacity is adequate. Papua's response was to create a separate temporary access layer for services at the venue instead of relying only on the surrounding mobile network.

Using three connections gave the organisers more room to distribute traffic than a single modem would provide. It does not guarantee three times the usable capacity, because performance still depends on the upstream links, local Wi-Fi design and how traffic is balanced. The agency has not published peak throughput or service-quality data from the event.

For BTW readers, the infrastructure choice matched the duration of the problem: extra capacity was brought in for a known traffic spike rather than built as a permanent upgrade. Whether it worked well enough should be judged by what happened during the busiest periods, especially payment availability, hotspot performance and live-stream stability.

What to watch

Watch whether Papua uses the same setup at other large events and whether it publishes measured throughput, hotspot usage or payment availability. Repeated congestion at the same venues would also matter: if temporary links are needed every time, that could support a case for permanent fibre, Wi-Fi or mobile capacity rather than another event-by-event workaround.