Telecommunications services across Sumatra have fully returned to normal after the large-scale disruption caused by the mass power outage. The Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs said the recovery had reached 100 percent and remained stable, with no follow-up interruptions reported.
The normal condition was recorded from 00:00 WIB on 28 May 2026 and stayed steady through 09:00 WIB. By then, every telecommunications service in Sumatra was operating normally, and no BTS site remained in a down or off status.
Recovery completed across all affected sites
The ministry confirmed that the handling of the telecommunications disruption linked to the blackout had been completed. All base transceiver station, or BTS, sites that were previously affected had resumed normal operations.
“There are no longer any sites with down or off status,” the ministry said, as quoted by Antara. That statement marked the end of a recovery process that had affected many areas across the island.
How the disruption spread
The outage reached its most severe point on Sunday, 24 May 2026, at 00:00 WIB. At that time, 10,713 BTS sites were reported down across 10 provinces and 142 regencies and cities in Sumatra.
The scale of the disruption made recovery more complicated, especially because the problem was not confined to a single location. Aceh also experienced a follow-up outage on Monday, 25 May 2026, at 21:00 WIB, which added to the number of affected sites.
Power failure as the main trigger
Before telecommunications services could recover, PT PLN (Persero) had already stated that Sumatra’s electricity system had returned to normal on Sunday, 24 May 2026. The earlier total blackout had occurred on Friday, 22 May 2026, and affected services in various areas.
PLN President Director Darmawan Prasodjo said the recovery process was carried out intensively from the start of the disruption. PLN Transmission Director Edwin Nugraha later explained that the power swing phenomenon appeared after heavy rain, lightning, and strong winds.
Those weather conditions caused a problem at the 275 kV New Aur Duri transmission line in Jambi. The impact spread further because most of the electricity supply for northern Sumatra flows from southern Sumatra, which caused the power system to be affected and, in turn, disrupted telecommunications services.
With the grid back to normal and every BTS site restored, Sumatra’s communication network has now returned to stable conditions. The blackout traces that had briefly spread across the island are no longer visible in telecommunications services.
Source: www.beritasatu.com
