In the remote village of Saliguma, on Siberut Island in Indonesia’s Mentawai archipelago, getting online used to mean a real journey. For years, residents had only two options to send a simple report or check an email: travel by sea to the nearest town, or climb the surrounding hills in search of a faint mobile signal.
That is starting to change. Through the Sekolah Internet Komunitas (School of Community Networks) initiative, a community-centred connectivity solution is now bringing reliable internet access to Saliguma, and local people are quickly putting it to use in ways that matter for their everyday lives.
Ibu Anna, a school principal in Saliguma, was among the first to feel the difference. She shared that teachers no longer have to travel long distances just to upload reports, update school files, or join Zoom meetings with the education office. “It really helps us,” she said, noting that both the proximity and the quality of the connection have improved how the school operates day to day.
The benefits extend well beyond the classroom. Recently, staff from Pustu Saliguma, the village sub-health post, came to use the network to send reports to Puskesmas Saibi, the main community health centre they report to. Pak Parmenas, one of the health workers, recalled how difficult things used to be. Before the community network, sending a single report meant choosing between a long sea trip or a climb up the mountain to find a signal. Today, he and his colleagues can send updates and receive information from Puskesmas Saibi without leaving the village.
These small but meaningful shifts, teachers reporting on time, health workers staying connected to their referral centre, point to what community-centred connectivity is really about: not just bandwidth, but enabling essential public services to function in places long left behind by commercial infrastructure.
Saliguma’s story is one of many emerging from the LocNet initiative in Indonesia, where local partners are working with communities to build, own, and sustain their own networks.***
(Akhmat Safrudin)
