Protecting Indonesia’s retail businesses through resilient cellular connectivity

Resilient connectivity is about protecting revenue, maintaining trust, supporting omnichannels, and ensuring continuity.

As consumers, we have become accustomed to an ‘everything now’ society in which goods and services are ordered and delivered quickly and conveniently. Companies competing to meet our high expectations of speed and simplicity need reliable connectivity for their online services.

Without it, they may lose orders and revenue; potentially even suffer damage to brand reputation.

In Indonesia’s fast-growing digital economy — which has over 200 million mobile internet users and a digital economy projected to reach US$1.945b ($2.482b) in e-commerce alone by 2030 — this expectation of always-on retail is amplified by the scale and speed of digital transactions. Connectivity downtime can directly impact revenue in one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic consumer markets.

High availability SIMs bring resilience to cellular connections supporting businesses in sectors that include food order and delivery services, parcel lockers, and vending machines. An increase in food deliveries, online shopping, and card payments is driving a growing need for resilient online connections.

Food deliveries
Indonesia recorded the largest food delivery growth in Southeast Asia, with approximately US$1b ($1.276b) in additional gross merchandise value (GMV) added year-on-year, reflecting sustained consumer demand.

Platforms such as GoFood and GrabFood rely on continuous connectivity to transmit orders, coordinate drivers, provide GPS navigation, and process digital payments. Each stage of the transaction depends on real-time communication between customers, merchants, and delivery partners.

Communication failures could result in missed orders, failed deliveries or customers chasing updates — outcomes that directly impact customer experiences, revenue and brand reputation.

Online shopping
Indonesia’s e-commerce expansion continues to drive parcel growth across the archipelago. Tier-2 and tier-3 cities are expected to contribute up to 50% of total e-commerce volume by 2025, reflecting expanding logistics networks beyond Jakarta.

Across Indonesia, retailers and logistics providers increasingly rely on smart parcel hubs, last-mile fulfilment centres, and digital pick-up points that depend on constant connectivity to verify transactions and update inventory in real time.

These systems must maintain 24/7 connections to exchange data on delivered and collected items and to verify information from collecting customers. Any service disruption could prevent customers from retrieving parcels, damaging trust in the retailer or logistics provider.

Card payments
Indonesia is rapidly transitioning toward cashless payments. QRIS, the national QR payment standard, continues to see explosive growth, with transaction volumes rising by 163% year-on-year in 2025, whilst BI-FAST processed over 400 million transactions, reflecting strong digital payment adoption nationwide.

On the other end, vending machines, like all point-of-sale terminals that process card payments, depend on resilient connectivity to take payments. Without this, there is a high risk of revenue loss should customers be unable to pay using their preferred method.

All these scenarios, and many more in the ‘everything now’ society we live in, depend on reliable and continuous online access. Without this, companies risk consumers giving up on current or future transactions and taking their business elsewhere.

What is a high availability SIM?
A high availability (HA) SIM is a multi-network roaming SIM that brings resilience to IoT applications. It works through an on-SIM application that continuously monitors network connectivity. If connectivity fails, the application seamlessly switches to connect to the next available network. This failover is essential for maintaining uptime in point-of-sale (POS) terminals, secure lockers, and vending machines.

Increasingly, these capabilities are delivered alongside eSIM technology, which enables over-the-air (OTA) provisioning and lifecycle control. This allows organisations to deploy faster, scale efficiently, and manage connectivity across large device fleets without the need for physical SIM swaps.

This integration of remote provisioning and real-time network resilience provides a more robust connectivity foundation for large-scale retail use cases such as digital displays and last-mile delivery. This is especially critical in geographically complex markets such as Indonesia that spans over 17,000 islands. This ability to automatically switch between networks adds an important layer of operational protection and resiliency.

Choosing an IoT solution with built-in resilience
Traditional mobile networks were not built with the IoT in mind; they were built to deliver consumer services. This is a big risk for IoT devices and the businesses that depend on them for their revenues and customer satisfaction.

For Indonesian retailers competing in an increasingly digital marketplace, resilient connectivity is not simply about avoiding downtime. It is about protecting revenue streams, maintaining customer trust, supporting omnichannel growth, and ensuring operational continuity across diverse locations.

Working with a dedicated IoT solution provider allows organisations to address these requirements through a single, tailored framework. This approach reduces time-to-market and provides the technical infrastructure necessary to scale retail operations across the APAC region. By offloading the complexity of connectivity management to specialists, businesses can ensure that their hardware is optimised for the specific demands of large-scale retail use cases, from smart vending to last-mile fulfilment.

As cellular services adapt to meet the demand for high availability, driven by businesses competing in this ‘everything now’ society, the role of a purpose-built IoT core network becomes more essential than ever.