Jakarta (ANTARA) – Minister of Communication and Digital Meutya Hafid has urged telecommunication operators to promptly repair Base Transceiver Station (BTS) installations affected by recent disasters to restore services in the impacted areas.“We have coordinated this with the telecommunication operators. These are mostly their BTS installations. We asked them to continue monitoring and carry out immediate repairs,” she said on Thursday.In addition to monitoring and repairs, operators have also been instructed to provide public updates on locations experiencing service disruptions.Through the Ministry of Communication and Digital’s official website, the ministry has published a list of affected BTS sites based on operator reports.She also called on service providers to be more proactive in informing users about disturbances on their networks.The Ministry recorded that at least 799 sites, or about 1.42 percent of the total 34,660 sites, were down due to flooding in Aceh Province on Wednesday (November 26).Her office also reported disruptions in Central Tapanuli District, South Tapanuli District, and Sibolga City, North Sumatra, following floods and landslides on the same day.Hafid explained that the disruptions caused by the flooding in North Sumatra resulted in the downtime of 495 sites, or approximately 1.42 percent of the total 34,660 sites in the province.The affected sites experienced outages due to power failures from the state electricity company PT PLN and transmission issues.According to Hafid, operators are restoring sites impacted by the PLN outage by deploying generators as alternative power sources until electricity returns to normal levels.However, flooded road access continues to hinder the mobilization of generators to the affected locations.Operators have also been working to restore sites affected by transmission disruptions by rerouting services through functioning points, which are currently being verified for further testing.
Minister urges cellular providers to repair BTS in disaster zones
