Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, Nokia reduce energy demand and support AI comms

Leading Indonesian digital telecommunications company Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Indosat) has announced it has deployed the Energy Efficiency module from Nokia’s Autonomous Networks portfolio to reduce energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions across its nationwide radio access network (RAN).

The key to managing the vast increases in data consumed across its networks is artificial intelligence (AI). Indosat, which is regarded as a frontrunner in AI-driven comms, has the stated vision to become the preferred digital telecommunications company in Indonesia. Together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, it provides cellular services, ICT offerings, datacentres, fibre-to-the-home, electronic payment services, financial products and other digital services.

In March 2025, the company announced an initiative to deploy an AI-based RAN infrastructure across Indonesia, becoming 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 and efficiency, and unlock new opportunities across industries.

The initiative is said to mark another critical step in Indosat’s broader transformation journey – from a conventional telecoms operator into an AI TechCo – powered by intelligent technologies, cloud-based platforms and a commitment to sustainability. By embedding automation and intelligence into network operations, Indosat is unlocking new levels of efficiency, agility and environmental responsibility across its infrastructure.

The multi-supplier, AI-driven energy management system is designed to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint with no negative impact on network performance or customer experience. It can be rolled out in a matter of weeks. Indosat was the first operator in Southeast Asia to achieve ISO 50001 certification for energy management – underscoring its pledge to minimise environmental impact through operational excellence.

The collaboration builds on a successful pilot project, in which the AI-powered service demonstrated its ability to reduce energy consumption in live network conditions. Following the pilot, Nokia deployed its Energy Efficiency service to the entire Nokia RAN footprint in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Central and East Java.

“This collaboration reflects Indosat’s unwavering commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainable innovation, using AI to not only optimise performance, but also reduce emissions and energy use across our network,” said Desmond Cheung, director and chief technology officer at Indosat.

Through using AI and machine learning algorithms to analyse real-time traffic patterns, Nokia says the Energy Efficiency package will enable Indosat to adjust or shut idle and unused radio equipment automatically during low network demand periods.

The service, engineered with intelligent thermal management to cut network cooling energy needs, is available in a software as a service model to eliminate large up-front capital expenditure and avoid the need to perform on-site software maintenance and updates, contributing to greener network operations.

Nokia’s Autonomous Networks portfolio, including its Autonomous Networks Fabric product, utilises Agentic AI to deliver advanced security, analytics and operations capabilities that provide operators with a holistic, real-time view of the network so they can reduce costs, accelerate time to value and deliver the best customer experience.

The unifying intelligence layer brings together observability, analytics, security and automation across network domains to allow a network to behave as one adaptive system, regardless of supplier, architecture or deployment model.