Indonesian telco Indosat has reaffirmed its focus to driving AI as a key part of its network offering.

The carrier has already outlined a number of key use cases that utilize the technology, including one that tackles scam calls and texts.

Last year, the carrier’s CEO Vikram Sinha told DCD that Indosat had identified AI as a key priority for its business, while also for Indonesia as a whole.

Eighteen months on from that discussion, the carrier has put a lot of its focus into the technology.

Even as the carrier announced its Q3 results this week, with revenue up 3.8 percent from the previous quarter, Indosat referenced AI frequently in its earnings report.

“Indosat’s AI-Native transformation is redefining how we create value and deliver digital experiences. With a strong foundation, disciplined execution, and purpose-driven innovation, we are confident Indosat will continue to grow sustainably and deliver meaningful impact for Indonesia’s digital economy,” Sinha said this week.

“AI for everyone”

Sinha stated that AI needs to be accessible for it to be a success. “At Indosat, we believe AI must be a force for inclusion—not just in access, but in opportunity,” he stated in July.

In the last year, Indosat has stepped up its AI push. In April 2024, the company paired with chipset giant Nvidia to build an AI data center in Surakarta, Indonesia.

More recently, in July, the operator paired with Cisco and Nvidia to support the establishment of Indonesia’s AI Center of Excellence (CoE). In order to fully maximize the potential of AI for Indonesians, Sinha explains that the AI CoE is a key focus for the operator.

"We want AI in Indonesia to focus in a very collaborative manner," he told DCD. "But the big focus, which I'm personally driving, is how we can work with academia, research, and others to build up use cases.

"We are working with university researchers on developing use cases around agriculture, health, and education. It has to be made in Indonesia."

According to Sinha, the CoE is built on six key pillars. The first is to secure AI Sandbox for developing real-world applications to solve industry problems. Others include: AI trainings to certify tens of thousands of Indonesians in AI and data science; an accelerator to support local AI startups; an enterprise hub for co-creating industry use cases; a platform to develop national Large Language Models (LLM); and a national think-tank to guide responsible, ethical AI policy rooted in local values.

Indeed, Sinha notes that Indosat is well-positioned to support AI computing power through its portfolio of data centers, which are equipped with Nvidia chipsets.

In 2022, it teamed up with BDx Data Center and Lintasarta to form a data center joint venture (JV). The agreement, valued at the time at around $300m (IDR4.8tn), marked BDx’s entry into the Indonesian data center market. The companies said the JV was formed to “meet Indonesia’s growing need for a higher level of global data center facilities.”

Indosat also has an AI Experience Center, which is located in Jayapura.

By 2027, Indosat estimates that it will have invested $1 billion in developing Indonesia’s AI factory. As of September 2025, the company said it has already invested $400 million to develop one million digital talents.

Cutting the spam

One such use case that Indosat has focused on is using AI to combat spam and scammers sending messages to its customers.

“We realized that one of the biggest problems to solve is spam and scams,” said Sinha.

It’s estimated that Indonesians lose hundreds of millions each year to scams. The country's Financial Services Authority (OJK) reported in October that Indonesia's financial sector has incurred losses estimated at Rp 7 trillion (US$422 million) from digital fraud since late 2024.

The issue led Indosat to launch its AI-powered anti-spam feature in August. The tool, which is built on Indosat’s proprietary AIvolusi5G platform, works automatically in real-time and is able to detect suspicious senders or callers, filtering potential threats, and alerting customers.

Built on Indosat’s sovereign AI factory with state-of-the-art Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.

“It's a real problem to be solved, and we got this feedback, and we started working on using our AI factory and using it with our partner to get this service to our 100 million customers,” said Sinha. “That is where AI has to be relevant. It has already protected close to 30 million customers from not only spam, but a lot of scam messages and scam calls.”

Sinha added that the tool will become even more effective when it gets more data, noting that the model will become even “sharper.”

As for the carrier's focus on its mobile network deployment, Indosat continues to deploy 4G and 5G services across Indonesia.

As of Q3, the telco operates more than 208,000 4G base stations, up 7.7 percent year-on-year. There's still some way to go with the telco's 5G network, though the operator now has 1,404 sites.

Indosat launched 5G in 2021. Its 5G network is available in eight cities, including Jakarta, Surakarta, and Denpasar, Bali.

In the future, Sinha expects 5G and AI to go "hand in hand."