GSMA: Indonesia could become leading APAC digital nation with accelerated digital investment

Source: GSMA Intelligence, in the GSMA Digital Nations 2025 report. Digital Nations Index: aggregate scores, 2025. Singapore tops the list of leading digital nations, followed by Australia and Japan. Brunei leads the list of emerging digital nations, followed by Indonesia and then Sri Lanka.

The GSMA has urged an investment‑led push to accelerate Indonesia’s digital transformation and drive innovation, outlining findings from its GSMA Digital Nations 2025 and ASEAN Consumer Scam 2025 reports.

Speaking at the Digital Nation Summit (DNS) Jakarta in December 2025, the GSMA outlined a programme to unlock private capital and speed deployment across the 5G spectrum, fibre backhaul and AI‑ready data centres, supported by policy certainty and cross‑sector collaboration. 

According to the GSMA, Indonesian enterprises are signalling one of the region’s strongest appetites for digital transformation. A GSMA Intelligence survey of more than 580 companies across ASEAN shows firms in Indonesia expect to channel an average 10% of their revenues into digital transformation between 2025 and 2030, above both the ASEAN (10.4%) and global (9.8%) averages.

Two-thirds of Indonesian respondents ranked AI in their top three areas of spend, while over half view a 5G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) as essential to future growth, underlining the country’s ambition to harness next-generation technologies for competitiveness and security. 

According to GSMA Intelligence, the next wave of 5G investment in Indonesia can unlock a further US$41 B in GDP for the nation’s economy between 2024 and 2030*. Mobile operators have invested almost US$29 B in Indonesia’s network infrastructure and services since 2015. With the right investment landscape, the industry—including operators and ecosystem partners—is expected to commit an additional US$16 B between 2024 and 2030, with a strong focus on 5G rollouts. 

Julian Gorman, Head of Asia Pacific at the GSMA said: “Indonesia’s scale, entrepreneurial energy and young, connected population give the country a strong opportunity to lead. The priority now is investment where it counts: affordable, predictable spectrum; resilient backhaul; and AI‑ready, sustainable data centres paired with visible consumer protections. 

"With clear policy signals and cross‑sector execution, Indonesia can innovate by crowding in private capital, hardening defences against scams and accelerating inclusive growth across the archipelago.” 

The GSMA’s Digital Nations report tracked the progress of Asia Pacific nations across five pillars namely in infrastructure, innovation, data governance, security and people, highlighting where investment can yield the greatest impact. Indonesia ranked in the middle of the 21 nations benchmarked. While it showed Indonesia’s strengths around people, digital skills and cybersecurity it also highlighted areas of improvement in innovation and investment. 

Delays to mid‑band spectrum allocation, uneven rural coverage and limited AI‑ready capacity risk slowing momentum just as demand accelerates. 

Consumer trust is also under strain. Indonesian insights from the ASEAN Consumer Scam Report 2025 show Indonesia tracks the broader ASEAN picture where 45% of adults report lifetime victimisation and 68% of victims lose money. 

In Indonesia specifically, scam contacts are even more mobile-first, with over-the-top (OTT) messaging (50%) and voice calls (44%) both above the ASEAN average. The good news: 81% of Indonesians support operators sharing minimal, purpose‑bound network signals (e.g., SIM‑change and number‑verification) at high‑risk moments to stop fraud - paving the way for wider use of GSMA Open Gateway (OGW) anti‑fraud APIs. 

Key priorities and opportunities highlighted in the reports, include: 

- More than 100 million people across the Asia Pacific region (APAC) remain outside a mobile broadband footprint, with rural communities, including those in Indonesia, disproportionately affected. 

- CBRE projects a 15–25 GW regional data‑centre capacity gap by 2028. Indonesia can build on sustainability‑linked finance to accelerate supply; for example, EdgeConneX secured a US$403.8 M sustainability‑linked loan, tying margins to PUE, renewable electricity use and safety KPIs. Such structures can attract institutional capital while advancing climate goals, the GSMA said. 

- Indonesia’s three major mobile players, Telkomsel, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and XLSmart have formed an alliance to protect customers from scams and other cybersecurity risks by jointly adopting open telco API protocols. 

They are deploying Open Gateway APIs such as SIM Swap, Device Location Verification, Number Verification, Device Swap, OTP Validation and KYC Match, to secure payments and logins without broad data sharing. Expanding commercial use in Indonesia will harden high‑risk journeys and demonstrate measurable scam loss reduction.

Indonesian scam insights from the ASEAN Consumer Scam Report 2025 include: 

- Forty-five percent report lifetime victimisation; 8% within the last year. 

- Nearly seven in 10 (68%) victims lose money; 11% report a large amount.

- OTT messaging (50%) and voice calls (44%) are primary routes; social platforms remain material (36%). 

- Eight in 10 (81%) are comfortable with exception-based, purpose-limited sharing of minimal network signals to verify risky transactions. 

- Comfort in telcos sharing personal data has risen from 75% to 81% when limited to suspicious transactions.

Calls to action for Indonesia include: 

- Publishing measurable targets for rural 4G/5G coverage, fibre backhaul densification and AI-ready datacentre capacity, aligned with power availability.

- Using timebound subsidies and blended finance vehicles (including sustainability-linked instruments) to derisk rural sites and next-generation data centres. 

- Confirm multiband timelines (low, mid, high), adopt assignment mechanisms that prioritise coverage and investment over short term receipts, and enable infrastructure sharing. 

- Extend live antifraud APIs across banks, wallets and platforms; leveraging the GSMA APAC Cross-sector Anti-Scam Taskforce (ACAST); and track outcomes (e.g., funds recovered, time to response). 

- Harmonise data flows, cybersecurity and digital trade rules to lower compliance costs and expand addressable markets for Indonesian innovators.

*GSMA Intelligence, Forging a resilient digital nation: Proposals for Indonesia’s future, December 2023.