Indosat & Huawei complete major network upgrade in Jakarta

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison has completed a significant core network consolidation project in Jakarta, in collaboration with Huawei, a global ICT solution provider. This project aims to advance Indosat's mobile communication technologies. It involved a massive scale operation covering over 100 million users and 26 core locations across Indonesia. The completion of this project within 14 months is notable for its unprecedented speed.

The consolidation is expected to considerably enhance the network experience for Indosat's users nationwide, particularly benefiting those in rural and remote areas. Residents of Kalimantan, for instance, will experience a 15% increase in average downlink speed and an 11% reduction in average round-trip time (RTT) for Facebook usage. Meanwhile, a renowned third-party report indicates that customers in Central Java will also notice improved performance when using the Internet for gaming and live video streaming.

Desmond Cheung, Director and Chief Technology Officer of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, commented on the milestone: "We're humbled to create another benchmark for the telecommunications industry. The core network consolidation project is a testament to our commitment to delivering a world-class digital experience to our customers. With the completion of this initiative, we believe we can consistently deliver a marvellous experience to our customers while paving the way towards our mission of connecting and empowering every Indonesian."

George Gao, President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, noted the significance of the collaboration: "Thanks to our close and in-depth cooperation, we are very pleased to witness a great achievement in completing such a large-scale and complex network consolidation in a short period of time. Huawei will continuously support Indosat to enhance network connectivity, accelerate service innovation, and create industry value in digital transformation, achieving greater business success."

The project was not without its challenges. Both Indosat and Huawei teams worked continuously to perform thorough analyses and reviews to determine suitable solutions, adhering to a first-time-right philosophy. Adopting leading telco cloud-native technology, both companies commercialised the use of bare metal containers and an innovative dual-engine container solution. This supports large-scale commercial use of 5G core networks. The dual-engine container solution utilises advanced technologies to manage both virtual machines (VMs) and containers within a unified infrastructure platform. This allows Indosat to introduce containers seamlessly through capacity expansion, significantly reducing the time needed for service rollout and lowering the time-to-market (TTM).

In light of the advance in intelligent and digital technologies, Indosat has increased its requirements for intelligence and enhanced user experience. Their partnership with Huawei facilitated the deployment of a future-proof core network capable of adapting to the 5G-A intelligent and hyper-distributed architecture. This not only meets current network needs but also paves the way for introducing more diversified 5G features and services for both consumer (toC) and business (toB) users.

Looking ahead, Indosat and Huawei plan to continue collaborating to build a more intelligent, efficient, and secure mobile communication network. The ongoing partnership will focus on providing better service experiences for Indonesian users and addressing industry challenges, thus fostering continuous development and innovation in the nation's mobile communication technologies.