Ahead of the Game

The drive for innovation is a group effort. The bigger the team, the deeper the pool of knowledge and expertise to draw from in the quest to come up with the next breakthrough.

And when it comes to innovation, few industries can approach telecommunications for effort, ingenuity and necessity. The leaps and bounds achieved in the field in the past five decades alone are astonishing, and the speed is picking up.

At Moratelindo, one of the country’s largest telco infrastructure and network providers, the talent pool is suitably impressive. Paired with its formidable technology partners, the company is committed to using its virtues to improve its offerings and operations.

“As an organization, we’re always looking at how we can use technological development to deliver a better-quality service and greater efficiency throughout the business,” CTO Michael McPhail tells The CEO Magazine.

“And from my perspective, it’s actually working together with our technology partners that drives innovation even higher. That’s the key aspect.”

Like many businesses in the telecommunications sector, Moratelindo has been on a journey of digital transformation. McPhail says innovation has fueled this trek.

“We’ve moved at quite a rapid pace, especially with the introduction of generative AI,” he explains. “That’s really changed the game in terms of what we can do, and we’ve been looking at how to integrate that into our day-to-day activity.”

The AI opportunity

The advent of AI has presented industries of all kinds with a brave new world of opportunity, but the more technologically inclined have approached it with a healthy modicum of caution. According to McPhail, it’s crucial to balance AI abilities with a human workforce.

“As we get bigger, improving performance becomes more than a matter of simply increasing headcount,” he says. “In terms of scaling the size of the network or our customer base, that’s not an option. What we’ve been doing is introducing automation so that we can become more efficient on a day-to-day basis.”

One of Indonesia’s leading telcos, the company is used to implementing sizable projects to improve services for its customers. In 2021, Moratelindo expanded its Oxygen.id fiber to the home (FTTH) broadband service to more than 410,000 homes, setting the stage for the company’s successful initial public offering in 2022.

“Something we’ve done well is building upon our wholesale telco solutions to develop our enterprise customer base,” McPhail points out.

“We’ve been in the FTTH business for some time, but we hadn’t aggressively expanded into that area. As we’ve scaled up, thanks to the expansion of our wholesale and enterprise base, we’ve had to introduce new approaches and technology into our day-to-day activities to cope with that increased scale.”

Not content to simply go through the motions, McPhail and the team at Moratelindo have kept its tool development in-house.

“It’s our belief that if we want to do things well, we have to develop them ourselves,” he says. “We’ve expanded our IT organization and our development team, and we’ve focused on building the right capabilities.”

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To date, that has included Android and iOS apps for customers, and proprietary software for internal use.

“To be honest, focusing on those internal solutions has been more important for us as we try to make our jobs easier,” he admits.

With the team freed up to focus their energy in new directions, McPhail says Moratelindo is ready to aggressively tackle the enterprise and retail markets.

“We’ve built a foundation that’s made sure it’s easy for us to reach those sectors,” he confirms. “Their requirements are so different from our retail customers, as is the engagement.”

Standing Out

Given that Moratelindo considers quality and customer service two of its main pillars, prioritizing these is critical, but McPhail says Indonesia itself provides some hurdles in that regard.

“With networks, there are always going to be some problems,” he reveals. “In Singapore, for example, if someone cuts your fiber cable, they’re responsible for potential losses in relation to that incident. In Indonesia, there’s no protection for that, and so you need to build a robust network.”

It’s this effort that he believes sets Moratelindo apart from its peers.

“Another way to differentiate ourselves is quick customer service turnaround, and that’s where automation comes in,” he says.

“Our target within the team for new FTTH connections is one day plus one. When we get a request for a new connection, we have that customer up and running the next day. That gives us a point of difference in the market.”

McPhail admits that in some ways, Moratelindo has its work cut out for it.

“FTTH is still quite a blue ocean in Indonesia. A lot of companies are trying to expand FTTH in areas which are mature, such as the Jakarta area, but getting approvals from the local communities to deploy FTTH in remote areas is a challenge,” he reflects.

“I think we’ll see that changing over time, however.”

With a new connection from Jakarta to Singapore in the works, Moratelindo is putting its enhanced operational tool kit through its paces.

“That’s a big project for us, but the capacity this new cable will be able to deliver is going to be huge,” he says. “The speeds and latency will improve significantly. We’re also looking at new ways to deliver higher capacities on existing fiber.”

With vendor and technology partners on side to make this possible, McPhail believes Moratelindo is in a strong position.

“We’re one of the leading companies in the country in terms of deploying and showcasing new technologies in high-quality, cost-efficient ways,” he explains.

“It means we can operate in a more efficient way and better serve our customers without the need to constantly scale, and therefore stay ahead of the game.”