Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison is advancing its AI-driven telecommunications strategy with the nationwide deployment of AI-RAN (Artificial Intelligence Radio Access Network) infrastructure in partnership with Nokia and NVIDIA. By integrating Nokia’s 5G Cloud RAN solution with NVIDIA’s AI Aerial platform, Indosat is creating a unified computing system capable of handling both AI and RAN workloads. This move positions Indosat as the first operator in Southeast Asia and the third globally to implement a commercial AI-RAN network, promising improvements in network performance, efficiency, and industry-wide innovation. The initiative also includes collaboration with Indonesian universities and research institutions to foster AI advancements in telecommunications, supporting academic research on network optimization, spectral efficiency, and energy consumption.
Beyond enhancing connectivity, Indosat is leveraging AI-RAN to support a broad AI ecosystem, aligning with Indonesia’s national AI strategy. The company’s Sovereign AI Factory aims to empower businesses, startups, and government entities by enabling AI-driven applications in healthcare, education, and agriculture. Using NVIDIA’s AI Enterprise software and serverless API capabilities, Indosat plans to facilitate AI workload distribution across centralized and distributed infrastructure. Key AI partners, including Hippocratic AI, Personal.ai, GoTo, and Accenture, will utilize these capabilities to scale AI inferencing and improve service delivery. The rollout will follow a phased approach, beginning with a 5G AI-RAN lab in Surabaya in early 2025, followed by a small-scale pilot later in the year and broader deployment in 2026, setting the stage for an eventual transition toward 6G technology.