​​Telkomsel’s by.U Pulls Off “High-Wire” Digital Surgery: How Indonesia’s Tier-1 Giant Modernized While Serving Millions

JAKARTA, Indonesia (JakartaWeekly.com) – In what is being described as one of the most complex “live” digital overhauls in the telecommunications industry, Telkomsel’s digital brand, by.U, has successfully migrated to a new cloud-native platform without interrupting service for its millions of users.

The move, executed in partnership with global telco tech firm Circles, marks a rare successful “brownfield” transformation—the industry term for modernizing massive, existing legacy systems while they are still in active use. Unlike “greenfield” projects that start from scratch, Telkomsel had to consolidate multiple aging Business Support Systems (BSS) and digital layers into a single, unified Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform while maintaining nationwide operations.

Navigating the “Brownfield” Risk

For Tier-1 operators, system replacements are notoriously risky, often likened to changing a jet engine while the plane is mid-flight. The new Circles-developed platform replaced fragmented legacy architecture with an API-first, modular system designed to scale at a national level.

According to the partners, the transformation was supported by rigorous change management and monitoring to prevent the outages that often plague large-scale migrations. The result is a unified environment that integrates product pricing, customer journeys, and marketing campaigns into one configurable interface.

Speed and AI Readiness

The technical shift is expected to yield immediate operational dividends for the Indonesian provider. By reducing latency in digital flows—such as the checkout process and product activation—by.U aims to deliver a more responsive user experience.

Furthermore, the architecture provides a foundation for future AI-driven initiatives. The modern data orchestration now in place establishes a path toward autonomous operations and more sophisticated digital monetization strategies.

“The platform’s configurability enables our teams to respond more effectively to market dynamics,” said Joyce Shia, Director of Information Technology at Telkomsel. “This transformation strengthens our ability to innovate at speed, while maintaining operational discipline.”

A Global Blueprint

The success of the by.U deployment is being positioned by Circles as a repeatable model for other global operators struggling with “technical debt”—the mounting cost and complexity of maintaining decades-old software.

Sanjay Kaul, Chief Revenue Officer at Circles, noted that the collaboration demonstrates that large-scale transformations can be “executed responsibly in live environments.”

By moving to a SaaS-based model, Telkomsel joins a growing list of global players—including KDDI and AT&T—that are utilizing Circles’ technology to transition from traditional telecommunications companies into “techcos.”