en.Wedoany.com Reported - On June 9, Indonesian telecom operator Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Finland's Nokia announced a partnership to modernize Indosat's nationwide mobile network. Nokia will serve as a key technology partner, supporting Indosat in deploying low-band and mid-band 5G radio access network equipment to build a high-performance, low-latency, and highly reliable mobile network for AI services.
This collaboration aligns Indonesia's 5G construction with the evolution of AI-RAN on the same technological path. Indosat plans to enhance mobile network capacity, coverage quality, and response speed through a nationwide 5G RAN upgrade, providing users with a more stable digital service experience while reserving stronger network capabilities for enterprise applications, public services, healthcare, education, agriculture, and smart cities. The key to AI-RAN lies in integrating AI computing power with radio access network infrastructure, enabling communication networks to not only handle connectivity tasks but also support AI inference, network optimization, intelligent scheduling, and new digital services at the edge. Indosat, Nokia, and NVIDIA also plan to conduct AI-RAN field trials in Indonesia by the end of 2026 to verify the synergistic operation of AI and connectivity on the same infrastructure.
The agreement covers Indosat's nationwide network, with a focus on supporting low-band and mid-band 5G deployment. Both parties will use the AI-ready network as a foundation for future service innovation and promote the implementation of AI Grid in Indonesia.
Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, features a wide distribution of islands and significant variations in urban density. Its mobile network has long played a dual role in providing universal connectivity and serving as digital economy infrastructure. For operators, 5G network upgrades are not only crucial for personal user experiences in video, gaming, remote work, and mobile internet but also for enterprise digitalization, industrial connectivity, public governance, and service capabilities in remote areas. By advancing an AI-ready 5G network, Indosat can combine centralized AI factories with distributed AI-RAN infrastructure to form an intelligent connectivity layer covering more regions. Nokia, in turn, can leverage this project to expand its deployment footprint of 5G RAN, AI-RAN, and network intelligence solutions in the Southeast Asian market. As mobile AI applications grow, operator networks must simultaneously handle higher traffic, more complex service quality requirements, and greater edge computing demands, positioning AI-RAN as a potential key intermediate form in the evolution from 5G to 6G.
The subsequent effectiveness of this collaboration will depend on network deployment pace, spectrum utilization efficiency, field trial results, terminal ecosystem, and the commercialization capability of AI services. If AI-RAN trials can operate stably in Indonesia's complex geographical environment and high-density user scenarios, Indosat has the potential to transform traditional communication networks into distributed digital infrastructure for AI applications, providing a replicable operator transformation case for other Southeast Asian markets.
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