Sometimes, bigger is better. That’s been the case so far with the $6 billion dollar merger of Hutchison 3 Indonesia and Indosat Ooredoo, which created the second largest telecom operator in Indonesia, one of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies.

But bigger isn’t always easier: To achieve and sustain long-term value for the business and its customers, the new Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) would need to successfully complete a MOCN network consolidation project in partnership with Huawei.

The IOH merger and subsequent network consolidation grew from several roots. Back in 2021, Hutchison 3 Indonesia faced bottlenecks in user and revenue growth due to limited spectrum and network capacity, while Indosat Ooredoo – which boasted a strong legacy brand in Indonesia – knew it needed to transform and optimize its own network to better serve Indonesia’s expanding digital ecosystem.

The new IOH partnered with Huawei for its network consolidation; once complete, the new complete now served a customer base nearly 60% larger, according to Mohamed Salama, Director of Managed Services Projects, Huawei. Combined with the ongoing evolution of 5G networks and services, IOH now operates with much greater scale – and greater complexity – than before.

That requires a significant revamp across both network and service domains, and a long-term shift toward intelligent operations grounded in advanced data analytics and automation.

“IOH has adopted an autonomous operations framework for our digital operations transformation journey, “ Salama said during a recent conversation with Telecoms.comEditor Scott Bicheno. Salama added that this AO framework gives both IOH and Huawei the necessary foundation for enabling further technical innovation in terms of AI, automation, and next-generation user experiences.

It’s more than a technical project, however. The CEOs from both companies set up a joint collaboration site to streamline decision-making and other work during the project, for example. They also prioritized people and culture – under the banner of “Stronger Together” – during the initiative, recognizing that the best technology in the world still requires great people and processes to run effectively.

On the technical side, the project’s success depended on choosing the right approach to network consolidation. IOH and Huawei opted for the multi-operator core network (MOCN) strategy as the best fit for the operator’s goals and its challenges, ensuring the project would be completed while managing budget considerations and focusing on continuous quality of service for users during the project.

The results to date speak for themselves:

Those achievements are also reflected in IOH’s business itself: Indosat grew high-quality customers increased by 4% YoY to 100 million during the first six months of 2023, which its data traffic increased by 16.8% YoY – more than 7,000 petabytes.