Telcos Pressured to Move Beyond 'Trial Phase' with AI
JAKARTA — Telecommunications operators in Indonesia are considered to be under pressure. Every day, their networks support more than 347 million mobile connections, from business transactions to everyday conversations, spread across more than 17,000 islands.
At the same time, operators are required to deliver a better customer experience whilst also cutting costs. Deloitte, the public consultancy, assesses that agentic AI has the potential to be a turning point for the industry, as long as its implementation is carried out with discipline and integrated into daily operations, rather than stopping at a trial project.
The 2026 Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions report states that pressure on operators is no longer merely technical, but commercial as well. Deloitte notes that up to 77 per cent of consumers worldwide do not feel genuinely loyal to their service providers. Only 47 per cent stay with the same operator for more than five years, whilst industry churn rates stand at around 22 per cent per year.
On the other hand, 86 per cent of consumers say they are willing to pay more for a better service experience. Piyush Jain, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Leader for Strategy, Risk & Transactions at Deloitte Southeast Asia, revealed that amid Indonesia’s fast-growing digital economy, the question is no longer whether operators will adopt AI, but whether they are disciplined enough in applying it to ease the burden on their networks.
In many countries, he said, too many operators remain stuck at the trial stage — initiatives that look promising when viewed one by one, but never scale up. He judged that the problem lies not in innovation, but in execution discipline.
“Operators that move forward treat AI as a business capability, not a technology experiment: there is a clear owner, measurable results, and firm decisions about which use cases to expand and which to stop,” said Piyush Jain in a written statement on Monday (27/7/2026).