Elon Musk launches Starlink satellite internet service in Indonesia, world's largest archipelago

DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — Elon Musk traveled to Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Sunday to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world’s largest archipelago nation.

Wearing a green Batik shirt, Musk was greeted with a garland of flower petals at a community health clinic in Denpasar, the provincial capital of Bali, where he launched the Starlink service alongside Indonesian ministers.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 17,000 islands sprawled across three time zones with a population of more than 270 million, has been trying for years to secure deals with Musk's Tesla on battery investment and for Musk’s SpaceX to provide fast internet for the country’s remote regions.

During the ceremony, Musk took a speed test of the Starlink internet service with several health workers in Indonesia’s remote regions, including in Aru, one of Indonesia’s unserved and outermost islands in Maluku province.

“This can make it really a lifesaver for remote medical clinics, and I think it could be a possibility for education as well,” Musk told reporters.

“If you can access the internet and then you can learn anything and you can also sell your business services worldwide. So, I think it’s going to be incredibly beneficial," he said.

He also signed an agreement on enhancing connectivity in the country’s health and education sectors. Details about the agreement between the Indonesian government and Musk’s SpaceX, the aerospace company that operates Starlink services, were not provided.

Launching the service at a health clinic aligns with Starlink’s broader mission of providing affordable access to high-speed internet services, particularly in underserved and remote regions, said Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

“Our remote regions need Starlink to expand high-speed internet services, especially to help with problems in the health, education and maritime sectors,” Pandjaitan, a close ally of Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, told reporters. He held separate talks with Musk on Sunday.

Communication and Informatics Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said earlier that local internet providers, which rely on base transceiver stations to transmit signals, are unable to reach outer islands because they have limited coverage. Starlink’s satellites, which remain in low orbit, will help them deliver faster internet with nationwide coverage.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said of the more than 10,000 clinics across the country, there are still around 2,700 without internet access.

“The internet can open up better access to health services as communication between regions is said to be easier, so that reporting from health service facilities can be done in real time or up to date,” he said.

During his first in-person visit to Bali, Musk is also scheduled to participate in the 10th World Water Forum, which seeks to address global water and sanitation challenges.

Musk spoke in 2022 at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies that took place in Bali. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.

Musk’s visit comes just weeks after Apple CEO Tim Cook met Widodo on April 17 and said the company would “look at” manufacturing in Indonesia. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited on April 30 and said the company would invest $1.7 billion over the next four years in new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Indonesia.

Indonesia under Widodo has promoted development of the digital technology and information sectors, aiming to achieve the government’s Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision. The country hopes to become one of the world’s top five economies with a GDP of up to $9 trillion, exactly a century after it won independence from Dutch colonizers.

Karmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.

Elon Musk talks to press media during the launch of Starlink satellite internet service at a public health center in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Elon Musk arrived in Indonesia's resort island of Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world's largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Elon Musk center, talks to press media during the launch of Starlink satellite internet service, at a public health center in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Elon Musk arrived in Indonesia's resort island of Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world's largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Indonesian Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, second from left, and Elon Musk, second from right, pose after signing an agreement on enhancing connectivity at a public health center in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Elon Musk arrived in Indonesia's resort island of Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world's largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Elon Musk gesture upon his arrival at a public health center at Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Elon Musk arrived in Indonesia's resort island of Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world's largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin, second from left, and Elon Musk, second from right, sign an agreement on enhancing connectivity at a public health center in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Elon Musk arrived in Indonesia's resort island of Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world's largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

FILE - Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington, Monday, March 9, 2020. Musk arrived in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Sunday, May 19, 2024, to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world’s largest archipelago nation. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man was sentenced to 60 years in prison Tuesday for starting a house fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family, a crime which the victims’ friends and family say has forever changed their lives and their community, both in the U.S. and in the west African nation.

Kevin Bui, now 20, was the last of three teens charged in the 2020 fire to be sentenced after pleading guilty to reduced charges in a plea deal. Authorities say Bui, who had recently been robbed, mistakenly thought he had tracked down his stolen iPhone and carefully plotted his retribution. But he neglected to make sure he was targeting the actual thief.

Instead, sleeping inside the home were members of three immigrant families who were working to support their families back home and had nothing to do with the robbery. They were Djibril Diol, 29; his 23-year-old wife, Adja Diol; and their 22-month-old daughter, Khadija, as well as Djibril Diol's sister, Hassan Diol, 25, and her 7-month-old daughter, Hawa.

Hamady Diol, the father of Djibril and Hassan Diol, spoke during the sentencing hearing by phone from Senegal about how he needs pills to sleep after losing five members of his family.

“I'm a dead person that's not buried yet,” he said in Pulaar through a translator.

The bodies of the victims were found on the first floor of the home near the front door as they apparently tried to escape the flames. Members of another family that also lived in the home managed to escape.

Bui, wearing a green jail uniform with his wrists shackled to a chain around his waist, said he was an “ignorant knucklehead” at the time of the fire. He said he could not fathom what it would be like to have family members ripped from you, reciting the names of all the victims.

But he pushed back on the idea that he was a monster or a terrorist, as some victims have called him, and instead said, “My heart beats the same as yours.”

“I have no excuses and nobody to blame but myself,” he said.

When he was killed, Djibril Diol was working on a large rebuilding of Interstate 70 in Denver and dreamed about returning to Senegal to build roads there.

Hassan Diol's husband, Amadou Beye was still in Senegal awaiting permission to come join his wife and meet his infant daughter for the first time when the fire happened. He was granted an emergency visa after the fire, works as a mover and tries to avoid being alone in the evenings to keep from thinking about what he has lost. With his roommate working nights as an Uber driver, he goes to the gym or calls family and friends late at night back home.

"I just don’t want to be thinking about that when I’m alone,” Beye said before the court hearing.

Prosecutors have portrayed Bui as the ringleader of the group that started the fire. The son of immigrants from Vietnam, he had been helping his older sister, Tanya Bui, deliver drugs she was dealing around the time of the Aug. 5, 2020, fire, according to federal court documents. The sister's enterprise was accidentally discovered when police searched their family's suburban Denver home as part of the fire investigation, and she is currently serving a nearly 11-year federal prison sentence.

After being arrested in connection with the fire, Bui told investigators he had been robbed of his phone, money and shoes while trying to buy a gun, according to court testimony from the case's lead detective, Neil Baker. Using an app to track his phone, Bui said he learned it was at the home and believed the people who robbed him lived there, though he did not research the home’s residents, Baker said at a hearing on the evidence in the case in 2021.

Bui admitted to setting the fire, only to realize the next day through news coverage that the victims were not the ones who robbed him, according to Baker. Investigators never said where Bui’s phone actually was.

In May, after a failed effort to challenge key evidence in the case, Bui pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. Sixty other charges Bui had faced, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson and burglary, were dropped by prosecutors, who recommended that Bui be sentenced to 60 years in prison.

If Judge Karen L. Brody rejects the proposed deal, both sides would have to either work out another deal or go to trial.

Relatives largely support the deal, not because they view it as true justice, but because they see it as the best way to resolve the criminal case nearly four years after the fire.

Beye, who is Muslim, said he hopes God will provide justice some day. But, after nearly four years, the relatives left behind are tired and want the last of the criminal cases resolved, he said.

“We just want to move forward because we’re going to have to live with this for the rest of our lives,” Beye said.

Last year, Dillon Siebert, who was 14 at the time of the fire, was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a state prison program for young inmates. In March, Gavin Seymour, 19, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of second-degree murder.

Surveillance video showed three suspects wearing full face masks and dark hoodies outside the home just before the fire started, but the investigation dragged on for months without any other leads. Amid fears that the fire had been a hate crime, some Senegalese immigrants installed security cameras at their homes in case they could also be targeted.

Police did not believe the home, tucked in among many similar ones on a street in a dense subdivision, was picked at random. They tried a new and controversial strategy — asking Google to reveal which IP addresses had searched for the home's address within 15 days of the fire. Five of them were in Colorado, and police obtained the names of those people through another search warrant, eventually identifying Bui, Seymour and Siebert as suspects.

In October, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the search of Google users’ keyword history, an approach critics have called a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court cautioned it was not making a “broad proclamation” on the constitutionality of such search warrants and emphasized it was ruling on the facts of just this one case.

This 2022 booking photo, provided by Denver District Attorney's Office, shows Kevin Bui. Bui has been sentenced to 60 years in prison Tuesday, July 2, 2024, after pleading guilty on May 17 to murder charges for starting a 2020 house fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family. (Denver District Attorney's Office via AP)

This undated photo, provided by Amadou Beye, shows his late wife, Hassan Diol. Diol was killed, along with their infant daughter, Hawa Beye, and three other members of Diol's extended family, in a house fire set by three young men in 2020. Kevin Bui has been sentenced to 60 years in prison on Tuesday, July 2, 2024, after he plead guilty to the murders on May 17. (Amadou Beye via AP)

This 2022 booking photo, provided by Denver District Attorney's Office, shows Kevin Bui. Bui has been sentenced to 60 years in prison Tuesday, July 2, 2024, after pleading guilty on May 17 to murder charges for starting a 2020 house fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family. (Denver District Attorney's Office via AP)

FILE- Abou Diol holds his head next to a picture of his brother, Djibril Diol, after a Denver Police news conference Jan. 27, 2021, at Denver Police Crime Laboratory in Denver. Kevin Bui has been sentenced to 60 years in prison, Tuesday, July 2, 2024, after he pleaded guilty to murder charges for starting a 2020 house fire that killed five members Diol's family. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via AP, File)

FILE - The house where five Senegalese immigrants were murdered in a fire is surrounded by old bouquets, stuffed animals and other remembrances, Jan. 27, 2021, in Denver. Kevin Bui has been sentenced to 60 years in prison, Tuesday, July 2, 2024, after pleading guilty to murder charges for starting the 2020 fire. (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via AP, File)