Telecom and cloud players were called to meet. They have in common to manage heavy and complex infrastructures. To decompartmentalise their architectures and reduce their dependence on equipment, operators have embarked on a vast movement of cloudification. The cloud-native approach should also enable them to deploy new services more quickly, reduce their operating costs and reduce their carbon footprint.
A trend on which the three American hyperscalers intend to surf. Playing sweet eyes at operators, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have multiplied announcements for them at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) which is held in Barcelona until March 2.
AWS: relieve operators of infrastructure management
As in so many other areas, AWS led the way. While its portfolio of dedicated services is already well supplied with AWS Private 5G (private 5G network), AWS Wavelength (edge computing), AWS Cloud WAN (wide area network in the cloud) and AWS Outposts (AWS infrastructure in on-premise mode) , the world’s leading public cloud provider, has just launched two new services.
AWS Telco Network Builder presents itself as a managed service that should help operators deploy, manage and scale telecommunications networks in the AWS cloud. Leveraging cloud-specific performance, scalability, and scalability, Telco Network Builder automatically scales compute and storage resources. By freeing themselves from network management, operators can focus on the commercial aspect and the provision of new services, estimates AWS in its press release.
To facilitate the conversion to the cloud, the provider uses the “standard language” of the telecom industry, including the concept of network functions (NF). Once the network specifications have been translated for the cloud world, an operator can replicate the same architecture model in another region.
This time for user companies, AWS offers Integrated Private Wireless on AWS, a program for deploying and managing private 4G or 5G mobile networks, in conjunction with partner operators including Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica. From a dedicated portal, the company selects the sector offer that best meets its use case and contacts the operator of its choice. The hyperscaler provides various services, including AWS Outposts and AWS Snow (data migration).
AWS took advantage of the MWC to discuss some feedback from operators. Orange has thus presented Pikeo, an experiment involving a standalone cloud-native 5G private network. It can be deployed on the French group’s infrastructure, in the AWS cloud or in hybrid mode thanks to AWS Outposts. This last option “enables corporate customers to benefit from better control of user traffic, low latency and to meet security requirements in terms of data localization”, specifies Orange in a press release.
Google Coud: monetizing networks
Orange is definitely in high demand since Google Cloud has communicated on the incumbent operator’s use of its artificial intelligence services. Last year, he carried out dozens of projects to improve his customer knowledge or improve operational efficiency.
Above all, Google Cloud announced three new products intended to help operators “transform and monetize their networks”. Telecom Network Automation makes it easy to deploy and scale networks by leveraging cloud-native automation applications, based on Kubernetes and Nephio, an open source project initiated in 2022 by Google Cloud and supported by the Linux Foundation.
Telecom Data Fabric simplifies the collection of data from different sources, then automates the normalization and correlation steps by leveraging the BigQuery and DataPlex platforms. Finally, Telecom Subscriber Insights aims to help operators quickly learn from their data. Objective: increase the number of subscribers, their commitment and the retention rate.
Microsoft capitalizes on Teams and AI
For its part, Microsoft has enriched Azure for Operators, its portfolio dedicated to the world of telecoms, with Azure Operator Nexus. This “next-generation hybrid cloud platform” should, according to a blog post, allow operators to rely on the cloud to modernize their networks, reduce their total cost of ownership, facilitate their operation thanks to AI and improve the security.
With Azure Operator Nexus, an operator can run workloads locally or from the Azure cloud. The American AT&T is one of the “early adopters” of this solution. Side equipment manufacturers, Ericsson and Nokia are stakeholders in the operation.
Microsoft also announced the general availability of Azure Communications Gateway and the private preview of Azure Operator Voicemail. The first is an interconnection service between the public telephone network (PSTN) and its Teams collaboration solution. Beyond video conferencing, Microsoft Teams can support IP telephony via the SIP protocol (Session Initiation Protocol). By interfacing its network with Teams, an operator can offer mobile services from this software known to all since the health crisis.
The Operator Voicemail service allows an operator to migrate their voicemail services to the Azure cloud. This managed service relieves them of their supervision and maintenance, which includes their upgrades and security updates.
Finally, the Redmond firm is capitalizing on the contributions of AI to simplify and automate network management. This results in the launch of two services, attached to its public preview AIOps portfolio. Azure Operator Service Manager should accelerate the deployment of operator services in hybrid environments by reporting key indicators.
Like what Google Cloud offers, Azure Operator Insights ensures the collection and analysis of massive amounts of data. It gives operators valuable information on the health of their networks and the actions to be taken to improve the subscriber experience.
Another new solution, Azure Programmable Connectivity, is aimed at developers. This interface should allow them to create cloud applications compatible with operator networks. Finally, Microsoft announced the general of Private 5G Core. This service makes it possible to deploy and operate private 5G networks at the edge of the cloud (edge computing) via the Azure Arc platform.