Agentic AI Seen as Key to Indonesian Telecom Operators' Efficiency by 2026
Indonesian telecommunications operators are facing increasingly heavy dual pressures. On one hand, they must support more than 347 million cellular connections spread across 17,000 islands for various needs, from business to daily communication. On the other hand, operators are required to continuously improve customer experience while reducing operational costs to remain competitive.
The 2026 Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions report from Deloitte reveals that the industry’s current challenges have shifted from merely technical issues to crucial commercial problems. Data shows low global consumer loyalty towards their service providers.
Deloitte assesses that agentic AI has the potential to become a turning point for the telecommunications industry. Unlike conventional AI, which only handles specific tasks, agentic AI is capable of coordinating actions and running cross-functional workflows autonomously from upstream to downstream.
Piyush Jain, Deloitte Southeast Asia’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Leader, stressed the importance of execution discipline. “The question is no longer whether operators will adopt AI, but whether they are disciplined enough to apply it to ease the network burden. The issue is not innovation, but execution discipline,” he asserted.
The economic potential of this technology is enormous. Deloitte projects the global market value of autonomous AI agents will grow significantly in the coming years.
Several operators in Indonesia have begun integrating AI into their core businesses. One operator is reported to have run more than 100 AI-based use cases to reduce network disruptions and accelerate customer service responses. Another operator has even started transforming into an AI-native model, embedding artificial intelligence directly into their physical infrastructure.
Aditya Shankar, Director of Monitor Deloitte Southeast Asia, cautioned that the window for transformation is very narrow. “In the next 12 to 18 months, operators that successfully embed these capabilities will have an advantage that is difficult for competitors to replicate,” he said.
This AI adoption momentum coincides with the government’s move through the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs, which is preparing a Presidential Regulation on the National AI Roadmap. The regulation, expected to be issued in 2026, will include ethical and security guidelines for AI.
The presence of this regulation provides a formal framework as well as urgency for operators to strengthen their AI governance. Deloitte concluded that the biggest risk for operators is not the lack of access to technology, but rather the lack of organisational discipline to turn AI experiments into real operational strength.