Telefonica Germany, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecom giant, will become the first established mobile operator to move its core network to a public cloud infrastructure. The company plans to migrate one million 5G customers to Amazon Web Services (AWS) this month, signalling Amazon's increasing presence in the global telecommunications market.
This move contrasts with the common practice of telecoms migrating non-core operations to public clouds. Cloud giants like Amazon and Microsoft have targeted the telecoms sector with its significant revenue potential. However, operators have been cautious about entrusting core network functions to public clouds.
"We want to observe operations for several quarters and aim to shift 30–40% of our customer base by 2025–2026," explained Mallik Rao, Telefonica Germany's Chief Technology & Information Officer.
AWS and Telefonica Germany haven't revealed the deal's financial terms. Moving the core network—responsible for securely routing data and calls—to a public cloud has the potential to reduce costs, enhance scalability, and allow for seamless updates.
Industry experts like Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight see this as a response by traditional telecoms to the rising influence of tech giants in the sector. The relationship between telecoms and cloud providers is likely to become increasingly complex.
In a similar but smaller-scale move, the US-based Dish Network built its entire mobile network on the AWS cloud in 2021. AWS vice president Jan Hofmeyr acknowledged it was a simpler task compared to migrating an established operator's core.
Telefonica Germany's AWS cloud infrastructure will be supported by Nokia software. This deal highlights the cloud market's rapid growth within telecoms, projected to surpass $100 billion by 2030.
Amazon aims to make running telecom workloads on its cloud a core business, Hofmeyr stated, anticipating further agreements with major operators in the coming year.
