Slow growth in cloud services is pushing Amazon to increase their focus on the telco market.
This week, Amazon announced the general availability of two products that they are rolling out just in tine for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The MWC will allow the tech giant to showcase these two solutions, which are aimed at the telecoms providers and carriers that Amazon sees as both partners and customers. This market segment has gained in strategic importance for Amazon as the cloud business is slowing.
First, there is the AWS Telco Network Builder, a fully managed service that helps customers deploy, run, and scale telco networks on AWS. AWS says that this new platform allows communications service providers (CSPs) to use their normal, telecom industry standard language to describe the details of their network in a template uploaded to the service. The details they describe could include connection points, networking requirements, compute needs, and geographical distribution, according to AWS.
Meet the AWS Telco Network Builder
The AWS Telco Network Builder translates the template into a cloud-based network architecture and provisions the necessary AWS infrastructure, shortening the deployment of an operational, cloud-configured telco network from days to hours. As customers update their networks, the Telco Network Builder automatically adjusts compute and storage resources. This allows CSPs to focus on business operations and deliver new services, AWS says.
The Telco Network Builder also provides a centralized dashboard to monitor and manage the network running on AWS infrastructure.
An Integrated Private Wireless Network
The second product AWS plans to show off in Barcelona is their “Integrated Private Wireless on AWS” solution. This product, according to AWS, is “designed to provide enterprises with managed and validated private wireless offerings from leading Communications Service Providers (CSPs)”. The offerings integrate CSPs’ private 5G and 4G LTE wireless networks with AWS services across AWS Regions, AWS Local Zones, AWS Outposts and AWS Snow Family.
Using a special portal, customers can explore private wireless offerings from participating telcos, browsing by industry or use case. In addition, customers can use the portal to contact the telco of their choice, who will design, deliver, operate, and support the private wireless solution.