Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Becomes First Mobile Operator in Southeast Asia to Deploy AI-RAN with Nokia and NVIDIA

Press Release Groundbreaking integration set to accelerate AI-RAN innovation and commercialisation across the globe Barcelona, Spain – March 05, 2025 – Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Indosat or IOH), a frontrunner in AI-driven telecommunications, today announced a landmark initiative to deploy AI-RAN (Artificial Intelligence Radio Access Network) infrastructure across Indonesia, with Nokia and NVIDIA. The integration brings together Nokia’s cutting-edge 5G Cloud RAN solution and the NVIDIA AI Aerial platform, to create a unified accelerated computing infrastructure for hosting both AI and RAN workloads. This milestone sets Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison as the first operator in Southeast Asia and the third globally to build a commercial AI-RAN network, enabling the convergence of AI and wireless connectivity to enhance performance, efficiency, and unlock new opportunities across industries. The companies entered into an MOU agreement to develop, test and deploy AI-RAN solution, with an initial focus on bringing AI inferencing workloads on NVIDIA AI Aerial, followed by the integration of RAN workloads on the same platform. As part of this initiative, Indosat, Nokia, and NVIDIA will also work with leading Indonesian universities and research institutions to drive AI-RAN development. This collaboration will support academic programs to foster AI innovation in telecom applications, and provide hands-on opportunities for students and researchers to contribute to next-generation AI-powered networks. By engaging with academia, the companies aim to accelerate breakthroughs in AI-driven network optimization, spectral efficiency, and energy consumption. This innovative approach will enable Indosat to revolutionize its network capabilities and business model. By sharing infrastructure costs across multiple applications, Indosat can maximize its return on investment while unlocking new revenue streams through a wide range of AI-driven services. The deployment will achieve transformative gains in network performance, spectral efficiency, and energy consumption, setting the stage for a software-driven 6G upgrade. This initiative aligns with Indonesia’s national AI strategy, positioning Indosat as both a connectivity provider and an AI service enabler. Indosat built a Sovereign AI Factory in Indonesia, to enable enterprises, startups and government entities to create local AI applications across healthcare, education, and agriculture. With the new AI-RAN infrastructure, the company plans to serve AI inferencing needs and supercharge the AI ecosystem for more than 277 million people of Indonesia using the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform and serverless APIs to enable optimized inferencing for a vast array of applications and seamless AI workload distribution across central and distributed infrastructure. The AI-RAN solution will enable Indosat to bring AI capabilities to every application. The new serverless APIs capabilities, built with NVIDIA, will enable Indosat AI application partners, including Hippocratic.ai, Personal.ai, GoTo and Accenture, to leverage distributed inference engines to provide AI tokens at scale ensuring a more consistent experience. Vikram Sinha, President Director and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, said, “This collaboration marks a transformative milestone for Indonesia’s telecommunications industry. By embedding AI into our radio access network, we’re not just enhancing connectivity—we’re building a nationwide AI-powered ecosystem that will fuel innovation across industries. This aligns seamlessly with our mission to connect and empower every Indonesian.” The deployment will follow a phased approach, starting with the establishment of a 5G AI-RAN lab in Surabaya in early 2025 for joint development, testing and validation. A small-scale commercial pilot of AI Inferencing workloads running on NVIDIA AI-RAN infrastructure is planned in the second half of 2025. Further expansion of this solution deployment will happen in 2026. Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, commented: “Nokia is proud to work on this groundbreaking initiative with our partner, Indosat to deploy transformative AI-RAN infrastructure across Indonesia. When you combine AI with RAN, you create an engine for future innovation. With our 5G Cloud RAN platform, Indosat can transform its network into a multi-purpose computing grid that leverages the synergies of AI-accelerated computing. With our AI-powered products, we help Indosat augment RAN capabilities for enhanced performance, operational efficiency, advanced automation and optimized energy efficiency.” Ronnie Vasishta, SVP Telecoms at NVIDIA, added, “AI-RAN has completely transformed the telecom industry. The combination of Indosat’s vision for a nationwide AI grid and NVIDIA AI expertise and full-stack software and hardware platform will catalyze AI adoption and innovation across Indonesia, creating a new playbook for telecom operators worldwide.”