Telecommunications News & Insights
Curated telecommunications developments in Indonesia, updated daily. 60 articles.
Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said the operator has built an internal AI agent platform and acquired land for a 400-500 MW facility, as it positions for an AI-driven growth phase.
The facility, live since February 2026, filled within seven months, prompting an expansion with NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs - vendor-reported figures.
The digital-ecosystem director revealed attempts to fool face verification using AI-manipulated ID photos and video replay, as biometric registrations pass 41.49 million - well beyond the December target of 18 million.
Telkomsel operates 6,300 5G sites, Indosat 19,500 and XLSMART around 15,000, with XLSMART winning 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum - as an ITB expert warns deployments need matching use cases.
The ISG Provider Lens study positions Cognizant as a leader across AI-led telco engineering, autonomous telecom IT and business operations, and AI-driven customer and revenue operations, with vendor-cited outcomes including 30-40 percent lower MTTR.
Signed at MWC26 Doha on 12 November, the non-binding agreement covers telco-grade AI for network operations, telecom-specific datasets and the open OTel model family; OTel 2.0 has passed 30 million downloads as of October.
At the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Doha, communications ministry officials reaffirmed face-verification requirements for mobile SIM registration under Regulation 7/2026 and announced a digital security partnership with Estonia.
The group showcase spans three pillars, build, control and impact, including an agentic intelligence marketplace for cross-institution AI exchange and a sovereign AI gateway with governance, guardrails and audit; AIX and ModelHub are at introduction stage.
The operator's network operations SVP said theft of BTS equipment is rising and disrupts connectivity, and XLSMART has pushed regulators for vital national object designation; one prosecuted case caused an estimated Rp5 billion loss.
The German operator's industrial-scale AI facility sold out its initial capacity within seven months and is adding NVIDIA B300 GPUs, while its AI assistant handled 2.6 million customer calls this year.
The operator's nine-month results show double-digit growth with AI cloud revenue already ahead of last year's total, backed by an 86,000 km open-access fiber grid and a gigawatt-scale data center JV.
Group revenue reached Rp113.5 trillion with data and IT services up 8.3%, but consolidated EBITDA margin slipped to 48.9% and Telkomsel's Q3 revenue fell 1% on IndiHome customer cleanup.
Indonesia's Komdigi and BSSN are coordinating to anticipate AI-agent-driven cyberattacks, with three advisory letters sent to government cloud users, domain administrators, and public service providers.
Telkom announced merger plans to fold Telkominfra into Telkom Akses and NSI into GSD, part of a streamlining of 50 of its 68 subsidiaries.
Bitera Data Center says it is targeting Jakarta's AI inference market with multi-storey in-town facilities, while an industry observer warns of risks from data center concentration in the capital.
The operator, with over 30 MW of capacity, says low-latency city-center sites with up to 200 kW per rack are the right shape for inference workloads, as an analyst warns of concentration risk.
Interns at Indonesia's communications ministry presented a telecom tower registration system, highlighting the absence of automated data validation and inconsistent standards across tower providers.
Interns building the ministry's tower registration system cited no automated data checks, inconsistent standards across tower providers, and unclear access controls, presenting to the communications minister.
The South Korean NPU designer will adopt NVIDIA NVLink Fusion for rack-scale inference, with SK Telecom planning deployment in its AI data center around 2028.
Security researchers documented an autonomous AI agent that exploited an unauthenticated XXE flaw in Cisco BroadWorks to breach a European telecom operator and 13 hosted organisations.
The open-directory 'Operation Snowball' shows an autonomous agent on a large-context model exploiting an XXE vulnerability in Cisco BroadWorks to steal credentials across a telecom and 13 hosted organizations.
Telkomsel says it has achieved TM Forum's Autonomous Network Level 4 Alpha Validation, the first operator in Indonesia, while receiving a national award for AI-native network innovation.
The operator claims it is the first in Indonesia and third in Southeast Asia to reach the alpha validation tier, citing AI-driven network monitoring that cut outage duration up to threefold.
The carrier frames the launch around smart city, IoT and MSME digitalization in the IKN-supporting city, with media speed tests showing 747 Mbps downstream.
Revenue reached Rp45.75 trillion with ARPU at Rp46,000, while the customer base shrank 3.1 million to 91.5 million in a quality-over-quantity strategy.
Qatar's communications minister said agentic AI demands more resilient networks and advanced compute, while Malaysia's Fahmi Fadzil warned against technology colonialism at the joint ITU plenipotentiary event.
Both Korean carriers' CFOs said the satellite operator's domestic impact is limited, while ITU working party debates interference criteria for smartphone-satellite links.
AT&T and AST SpaceMobile announce the industry's first handoff between a terrestrial mobile network and a satellite direct-to-device connection using a standard smartphone.
Indosat commercially launches its Intelligence Suite with more than 300 AI models, reporting AI cloud revenue of US$50 million for 9M26 and vendor-reported 2027 contracts above US$300 million.
A Mirae Asset Sekuritas research note cuts Mitratel's target price by 12 percent after third-quarter core profit came in below expectations, citing rising G&A and employee costs.
Permenkomdigi 7/2026 requires facial biometric verification with at least 95 percent matching accuracy, liveness detection and ISO 27001 certification for mobile subscriber registration.
Telkomsel's Q3 2026 results show fixed broadband revenue down 3.4 percent after a purge of inactive IndiHome subscribers, with quarterly subscriber and ARPU trends improving.
AT&T and Amdocs have signed an eight-year agreement combining the Amdocs aOS platform with AT&T's AI-enabled framework, while Globe Telecom of the Philippines announced an aOS expansion on the same date.
Komdigi says the draft presidential regulation establishing an independent PDP oversight body has been submitted, with a transition task force prepared and formation targeted for 2026.
The Communications and Digital Ministry says the draft presidential regulation establishing the personal data protection supervisory authority has been submitted to the President, with the body targeted for formation in 2026.
At a Bappenas socialization session, the Communications and Digital Ministry outlined the One Data Indonesia implementation, with the SPLP interoperability layer supported by the National Data Center and the Government Internal Network.
The Triputra-KKR-Singtel-backed operator also topped out Jakarta 3, plans a campus of up to 360MW across nine buildings, and installed Indonesia's first on-site high-voltage substation for a DC campus.
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia has completed the acquisition of PT Digital Aplikasi Solusi (Digiserve), effective 1 November 2026, renaming the entity PT Telkom Solusi Indonesia to lead its corporate ICT business.
The Communications and Digital Affairs Ministry confirmed it is examining a reported breach affecting around 5.7 million accounts, while the draft presidential regulation establishing a dedicated personal data protection authority has been submitted to the President.
SpaceX will use Qualcomm Dragonwing radio and baseband equipment for a nationwide terrestrial 5G buildout starting in 2027, complementing the Starlink satellite constellation and positioning SpaceX as a candidate fourth US mobile operator.
The collaboration between Telkom University and air navigation provider AirNav Indonesia produced an AI application to assist in drafting Notices to Airmen, presented at a USTDA forum in the United States.
The government formally socialized the Single Data Indonesia Law, introducing the Government Service Link System backed by the National Data Center and the Government Intranet Network as the backbone of cross-agency data exchange.
The operator confirmed that XL, Smartfren and AXIS customers are served over one multi-operator core network, while raising its 2026 capital expenditure to Rp20 trillion and its year-end 5G coverage target to 88-101 cities.
(1) **Verizon** announced the rollout of the Ericsson Intelligent Controller (EIC) on its US network this year to run rApps — AI applications for traffic management, Massive MIMO cell shaping, and automatic migration of FWA devices from LTE to 5G SA without manual intervention; it will add the Cell Anomaly D…
Nokia projects global data traffic to grow ~4x to about 3,789 exabytes/month by 2035, with AI accounting for ~44%. Traffic from autonomous AI agents is projected to grow 160x and physical AI (robots, vehicles) 105x vs 2026 — mostly in the form of **uplink** (>90% of physical AI application traffic), demanding low latency and…
In its 9M2026 results release (revenue up double digits, data traffic +16% to 14,829 PB), Indosat highlighted **Indosat Intelligence Suite** — a managed AI platform for corporate customers built with **F5**, unifying access to AI models & infrastructure through a single layer, including F5 AI Secur…
PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy Tbk (PGEO) said the technology study for a green data center pilot at the Kamojang geothermal field (West Java) is complete ("it's fixed"), and the project has now entered the commercial and regulatory study phase — including the potential to supply electricity directly to data center operators **without**…
Merza Fachys said XLSmart is accelerating 5G expansion with a "blanket" approach (entire cities served, not hotspots), while **modernizing 4G in parallel** because about 70% of customer devices are still 4G. The merger tagline it holds: "we connect all industries" — telecommunications as the back…
The ministry secretary-general proposes collective negotiation with global AI players per ecosystem stack to avoid operators becoming mere revenue channels.
The letter of intent covers policy development, operational standards, energy sustainability and workforce development, accompanied by a three-day government-industry workshop.
Telkom's data center unit says all capacity at its hyperscale Cikarang facility is operational, with expansion studies on industrial sites recommended by Danantara Indonesia.
The JKT2A facility opens carrier- and cloud-neutral with an all-photonics network service linking Jakarta campuses for real-time replication and disaster recovery.
Tower monetization and consolidation gathered pace on 2 November with a Qatar-Kuwait tower pooling deal and SBA Communications selling assets in Chile, Ecuador and Peru.
VodafoneThree has started deploying the Ericsson AIR 3266, described as the first commercial deployment of the AI-ready Massive MIMO radio, as part of a program to upgrade more than 10,000 sites to 5G standalone.
Two global tracks reinforcing operators' direction: (1) **Verizon** (Q3 call, CEO Dan Schulman) announced 1 Gbps FWA based on 1,700 MHz of "reused" mmWave spectrum, targeting an additional 10–15 million 1 Gbps premises on top of its 40–50 million fiber plan, with rollout starting this quarter and running through 2027 — marking a "m…
Secretary of Komdigi's Directorate General of Digital Space Supervision Mediodecci Lustarini (Monday 2/11) explained: Communications and Digital Ministerial Decree No. 127/2026 sets content-handling deadlines — access termination within 4 hours (urgent content) / 24 hours (non-urgent) — while KM 128/2026 contains the supervis…
9M26 figures: revenue Rp113.5 T (+3.5% YoY), EBITDA Rp55.5 T (48.9% margin), net profit Rp14.4 T, capex Rp15.7 T (13.8% of revenue). Highest growth: Data, Internet & IT Services +8.3% → Rp71.5 T; Telkomsel ARPU +7.1% → Rp45,400. **NeutraDC** revenue +17% YoY → Rp1.39 T, EBITDA margi…
The procurement portal shows an active tender for leasing an AI agent platform for data management & digital transformation within the State Secretariat (Setneg), with three important details: (a) the "lease extension" category — meaning there is already ongoing usage; (b) "re-tender" status — a previous process failed/was canceled,…
Deputy Communications and Digital Minister Nezar Patria challenged all government agencies to use AI to speed up public services: "Before this quarter ends, identify one service in your unit where AI can cut waiting times from a matter of weeks to a matter of days." Event context: Indonesia's strategy in the AI supply chain as a "middle power".
Communications and Digital Ministry infrastructure chief Wayan Toni Supriyanto takes over as acting director of the connectivity agency, which pledges to keep focusing on remote-area coverage.