A New City Springs From The Rainforest To Become Indonesia's Tech Hub

If an entire major city was designed from scratch today, what technologies would be built into its fabric? We're discovering as we watch Indonesia erect a new capital with tech at its heart.

The nation's future capital, Nusantara, opened its doors last month to up to 300 members of the general public daily for daytime bus tours. Located on more than 250,000 hectares of rainforest land on the east coast of Borneo's Kalimantan, the city will gradually replace Jakarta as the administrative center over the next two decades.

Why move?

The problem with Jakarta is that it's quite literally sinking. In some areas, at a rate of 25 cm per year.

Over-extraction of groundwater and the sheer weight of buildings — a consequence of Jakarta's role as Indonesia's commercial and administrative center--are at the root.

Jakarta's infrastructure is also notoriously inadequate and its traffic is thick and slow.

What's the new city like?

Nusantara, however, is a rare place in Indonesia where tap water is drinkable, the planned capital aims to be a model of livability and sustainability. The vision is that it will remain walkable with 75 percent of its area dedicated to green spaces.

The government has planned smart energy grids to power the city using predominantly renewable energy. It's aiming to be carbon neutral by 2045. Over 21,000 solar panels were already installed as of early 2024.

The streets are set to be lined with electric vehicles and autonomous shuttles, all monitored by AI-powered surveillance systems that manage traffic while keeping emissions in check.

That surveillance is to be orchestrated by an Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) that serves as a technological nerve center.

Fully digital

Nusantara is also promised to be 100 percent digital for both residents and businesses. The government has declared its digital services will have an over 75 percent satisfaction rate.

Digital connectivity is provided through state-owned operator Telkom Indonesia.

The Nusantara (IKN) Authority, alongside the State Electricity Company (PLN), is already laying the groundwork for 5G networks and smart city devices, with plans for a massive National Data Centre with 160 petabytes of capacity to support AI, IoT, and big data analytics.

But like all anticipated public projects, this too is a story of slow steps. Indonesia's second-largest mobile operator Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) spent a good part of this year simply installing just 4G LTE, spending around $10 million as of the end of last year to more than double the 30 base transceiver stations in the area.

IOH CEO Vikram Sinha justified the decision by stating, "In rural areas, 4G device penetration is still much higher than 5G, so we are focusing on expanding and strengthening our 4G network."

The eventual 5G infrastructure will support Nusantara's operation as a smart city, which NEC Indonesia signed on to plan its development, design and implementation.

Smart cities, smart buildings

IoT is expected to connect various services, including traffic management, energy consumption, waste management, and public services, all informed by AI systems and embedded sensors, including ones made by Cisco.

IKN Authority set out a smart building guideline [PDF] that describes a healthy amount of integrated tech, which it encourages but does not require implementation. The org recognizes that some building projects could have different priorities depending on usage.

Inside the buildings, features include automation and monitoring of building conditions; self-adapting air conditioning and lighting; rainwater collection and greywater recycling systems; biometric authentication for touchless access; voice and video intercom systems with remote access; automatic meter reading; sensor-led disaster response; intelligent video surveillance as well as smart escalators, automated walkways, and parking systems. While all of that will be on the backend, interactivity between buildings and occupants will occur through a smartphone app.

There's an app for that

In February, the IKN Authority released its "IKMOW" smartphone app, which will allow residents to access public services. Although the city is currently resident-less aside from construction workers and project staff, the app can reportedly already be used to contact emergency services.

The vision for IKNOW is to allow Nusatarians to find anything they need in the city - EV charging stations, healthcare providers, restaurants, news updates and more. IKNOW will also assist in activities like filing taxes, submitting complaints to the city, or identifying wildlife, of which the surrounding area has plenty.

The app is designed to take data from its users and personalize its services.

• Microsoft boss charms Indonesia with $1.7B AI, cloud injection
• India's $20B Smart Cities Mission isn't, and has hardly scratched the surface after eight years
• Microsoft revising licenses and prices in Korea and Japan, won't say why
• China's tech giants buy into Indonesia - just like US tech giants did in India

Cybersecurity wanted

On a more pessimistic note, having a fully interconnected city in the heart of national administration, puts cybersecurity at the top of planning lists.

Generally, planners see that predictive threat analysis with AI assistance are expected to threats, along with drones deployed for security and monitoring.

The smart infrastructure built into the city and buildings will help enable that surveillance, while military and space contractor Thales is involved with the development of an unmanned aircraft traffic management system.

Microsoft is coming onboard to "the development of secure and resilient digital data centers and cloud computing infrastructure."

But it's hard to downplay the cascading risks of online break-ins and breaches. The city has a strategy that includes cyberincident response teams while all electronic service providers (ESPs) are required to establish CIRTs and report incidents.

The effectiveness of these measures may not become clear until the city is fully operational. After all, Indonesia's decentralized approach to cybersecurity has received its fair share of criticism.

Just this summer, Jakarta found itself in an embarrassing situation involving ransomware-affected government data with no backups, resulting in airport immigration services being shut down.

Challenges

Major delays, including those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have created more challenges and set the timeline back. The original timeline dictated that 10,000 civil servants should already be living in the city ... but they aren't.

Financing problems have also hampered progress. Eighty percent of the $34 billion cost to build the city was supposed to come from private investment, but players like SoftBank have instead withdrawn support and other foreign investors have failed to materialize.

Questions about whether the tech-heavy approach can be sustained in a region as remote as Borneo. While the government promises the zone will remain green, critics argue that deforestation and displacement of indigenous communities are inevitable when you build a city from scratch in the rainforest.

And of course, the city requires a public willing to accept Nusantara. Opinions are mixed, especially in a culture where family connection is central making it hard to see how many people will uproot to relocate. Unless, of course, the economic appeal is immense.

Concerns also mount over whether those indigenous to the area will adapt to the sudden change. Fights have already broken out between officials and workers over cashless payment systems and concerns about job replacement.

Gartner vice president of research Bettina Tratz-Ryan told The Register that Indonesians do show the aptitude to adopt and embrace digitization, but said business communities in Indonesia will need to ramp up their digitization efforts - both fast and across industrial value chains.

"This will require governance not only in the development of advanced infrastructure and access to data, but also in a structured approach to creating digital benefits for citizens and industry alike," asserted Tratz-Ryan. "Open source is one technical approach to support democratized access to technology code and capabilities, but it needs to be accompanied by cybersecurity and data trust mechanisms."

To express overall distrust, many locals have taken to referring to Nusantara as “Wakanda,” drawing parallels between their new capital and the fictional technologically advanced African nation in the Marvel Comics universe.

"It's a way to criticize government decisions and officials without the risk of imprisonment," one Indonesian explained of the memes to The Register. "It's a beautiful country with rich natural resources – and the government is just doing anything they want."

What Indonesia is doing may be new in scale, but not concept. Many other countries have taken on the task of creating cities from scratch. Whether Nusantara can become a blueprint for future ones remains to be seen.

For now, the jury's still out. But at least in Nusantara, finding out doesn't require waiting for hours in traffic. ®