Telecommunication Engineering Goes to Singapore

After managed every little things for more than one semester, finally students of Telecommunication Engineering – STEI ITB 2013 cohort succeed to do excursion. This event was led by Laras Adhianti, managed by students in arranging and finding ways to fund the event, and also supported by the lecturers especially Mr Rifqy Hakimi as our accompanying lecturer. This event became our major annual event since two years before, the main purpose is to enlarge students’ knowledge about job opportunities which are related with our major and the condition in our destination hence students could compare and make innovation for this country.

Our excursion destination was Singapore. Not only because it’s the nearest country from Indonesia but the main reason is this country are really concerned about the technology development and telecommunication infrastructure to pursue its vision as a smart nation. Hence, there are many companies which are related with our major and also there are two universities ranked top 20 universities in the world (based on QS University Ranking). The excursion was held for 6 days, start from 9th until 14th January 2017.

Our very first day were spent to visit the exhibition in Esplanade Junction, it’s called as iExperience. This exhibition showed us all new technologies that became the enablers of Singapore as a smart nation. Some of its examples were internet of things implementation in a smart home, smart traffic, smart health, and also big data analytics. All of that technologies were covered by interesting user friendly interfaces! All guests could try it and it was free entry!

The government realized that smart nation with its high-tech systems were being just known by certain people, so they decided to built iExperience in the middle of a food court to introduce the concept of smart nation to the entire citizens.

The next day, we visited Xtremax. This company specialization is in making and developing web for Singapore’s government. Since 2003, they built a development center in Bandung, Indonesia. Even Bandung office has larger employees than in Singapore. Most of the employees in Indonesia are STEI ITB alumnus. The head office in SIngapore focuses in running the business while in Bandung focuses in doing engineering things. Telecommunication engineering graduate has a big opportunity to sit on facility management and platform base infrastucture division such as handling the data center and cloud computing.

On the third day of excursion, we visited MyRepublic, one of on top internet service provider (ISP) company. This kind of company is also called as thin operator, it means that this company didn’t spend a lot of cost to operate. There are three layers of business that they provide, retail (running in distribution, brand, and product sector), active (running in operator and technology sector), and passive (running in fiber optic packaging). All of those layers always be upgraded along with the development of the age, except the passive layer because the development isn’t growing fast. MyRepublic becomes the national broadband network in Singapore and also enlarge its business in New Zealand, Australia, and Indonesia.

Next destination were National University of Singapore (NUS). NUS is the best university in Asia and ranked 14th in the world! Our visitation time were held in their first week of lectures, so the faculty couldn’t host us officially. Fortunately, Mr. Ridho who was an alumni of STEI ITB and now become a promoted doctor in NUS, he was willing to accompany us! He took us around electrical and computer engineering faculty and UTown. UTown is a place in NUS where the students’ houses, clubs, food court, and other multifunctional halls are gathered and it was built in a modern style.

In the following day, we continued to visit two companies and one university. First company that we visited was Indosat Singapore Pte. Ltd. (ISPL), a telecommunication operator from Indonesia that serves the international needed. All of the employees are Indonesian, they welcomed us warm and explained the company profile in engineering and business sector deeply. This company is acquired by Ooredoo Asia Pte. Ltd. group but Indonesia government still contributes 14,29% of ISPL’s stock. There are some of ISPL services such as enterprise network, video and media industry, e-commerce, apps, games industry, and wholesale markets. Because of the space’s limitation in ISPL office, so there were only 7 students who could visit the office.

Next company was PCI Limited. This company run the global technology manufacture. Its head office is in Singapore and the factory is located in Batam, Indonesia and Shanghai, China. PCI focus in helping the clients to build and market their products efficiently in a competitive price. They do the design, provide the electrical components, manage the supply chain, and serve the logistic. PCI also has signed the MoU with our major (Telecommunication Engineering, ITB) to increase the cooperation such as allowing students to do internship in their company.

Last visitation in the fourth day was Nanyang Technological University which is located in western Singapore. This university is ranked right after NUS. It provides good quality education especially in engineering division. It also provide the research scholarship for those who interest to do a research and graduate as a Ph.D, even they are just a bachelor graduate (no need to take the master’s degree before). In our visitation, we were hosted officially by them. We visited three laboratories, there were Satellite Research Center (SaRC), Media Technology, and robotics. The research environment is so good, university provides good quality start from the infrastructure until the professor who led the research. In the first lab, SaRC, they design, build, and also launch the satellite! The example of the satellites that were built by them are XSAT, pico-satellite, and nano-satellite. In media technology lab, the students create hand gesture recognition with depth sensor. The last laboratory, robotics, showed us one of their projects, it was a disaster rescue robot.

Finally, we reached our last day in Singapore. The last day were spent by held a gathering in Universal Studio Singapore. Yeah, it’s just a formal title, “gathering”, what we did there was just having fun! Who doesn’t love theme park? Last but not least, this excursion has not only broaden our knowledge about the work opportunities in telecommunication sector but also gained our experiences by knowing the overseas country condition. It didn’t stop there, by organizing this event, we studied how to manage all things, started from finding the ways to fund the event, contacting the company, preparing the accommodation, until maintaining our academic (because this excursion things quite time and brain-consuming). However, this event was such a great experience that cannot be replaced by anything! Thank you for all parties who have supported this event. One thing, choosing Telecommunication Engineering in ITB as your major will never be wrong! You can get a lot of experiences here.

Text by Laras Adhianti