U.S. cable giant Comcast recently moved its 5G wireless core to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud infrastructure, continuing what has been a slow migration by telecommunication providers in taking advantage of hyperscale infrastructure to power advanced services.

The Comcast move involved the migration of its formerly on-premises infrastructure into AWS’ cloud. This infrastructure will be used to power Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile 5G services using the carrier’s licensed spectrum and offer Comcast the ability to tap into AWS’ telecom-specific services.

The Comcast move follows similar brownfield deployments onto AWS’ cloud, with the most notable being German telecommunication giant O2 Telefónica’s move last year to migrate up to one million live customers to AWS’ platform.

Ishwar Parulkar, CTO for telecom and edge cloud at AWS, explained to SDxCentral that this growing move by brownfield operators requires more advanced planning.

“With brownfield the challenge was not as much the cloud features per se, but really architecting it with the constraints in place,” Parulkar said.

One example was that Comcast already had established internet peering points, which required an adjustment on how to route traffic from the AWS-hosted network core that sits in a region to the internet peering point.

“These are network architecture problems, not necessarily what the cloud needs to support, but it has some implications on how you would deploy these functions in the cloud, where you would deploy, whether to use Regions, Local Zones, or Outpost, which is our on-premises offering of AWS infrastructure,” Parulkar said, adding that with brownfield deployments “the exercise was just looking at the overall end-to-end architecture and see where to place the workloads, how to place them, how to route the traffic.”

This planning also highlights the flexible nature of using cloud infrastructure, which can support brownfield operators as they continue transitioning their core 5G network architecture toward advanced standalone (SA) deployments.

“They already have existing networks, and they would do that anyway even when 5G is implemented,” Parulkar said. “As an example, 5G SA is not in all markets, so they start transitioning some markets from LTE to 5G. Some of the radio towers would be changed, some of the things would be changed. I see this as a similar thing. Certain operators are starting with certain number of subscribers, or certain markets and geographies.”

AWS stresses network flexibility and maturity

That network architecture flexibility was highlighted late last year when Boost Mobile ditched Broadcom’s VMware division’s container-as-a-service (CaaS) platform for a similar platform from Wind River. VMware’s platform had been core to Boost Mobile’s unique open network architecture that runs on top of AWS’ cloud infrastructure.

Boost Mobile CTO Eben Albertyn touted the advantage of its unique network architecture in allowing the carrier to make such a deep core change “in a way that our customers won’t even know it’s happening.”

Another example was recently noted by AWS rival Google, which worked with Canadian telecom operator Telus in migrating its browfield network to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Jaime Tatis, chief insights officer at Telus, explained to SDxCentral that the multi-year process relied heavily on the flexible nature of the cloud architecture.

“You have a mindset that this is the plan that I'm going to have for two, three years, but in six months a monkey wrench is coming at you because the technology changed,” Tatis said. “So now you recognize that was a good idea six months ago, but now all these things change.”

Tatis noted that Telus got into a rhythm that they were always going to be changing plans and that you need to have a plan in place to allow for the work that has been done to now adapt to a new plan. Tatis termed this as a plan to keep the modernization going.

“Because you modernize up to now, that doesn't mean that's going to still be modern two, three years from now, so you have to keep evolving that every single time,” Tatis said.

This requires a flexible architecture that allows for easier portability of progress and systems as new technology comes onto the scene.

“You need to have a flexible architecture, flexible connectors to be able to allow you to keep modernizing,” Tatis said. “You don't want to anchor yourself in something that is going to be really hard to move from, you want to work with technologies and solutions that allows you to move quicker.”

Parulkar echoed that sentiment.

“That's one of the key benefits of the cloud is the agility in modifying, changing, upgrading the network is a very different level,” Parulkar said. “When you look at cloud-like approaches to building infrastructure, we do this all the time. We change and the customers don't see anything, they don't even see a blip. That's the vision here is to get networks to that level.”

Of course, not all operators are rushing headlong toward public cloud offerings like what AWS brings to the table.

Adam Koeppe, SVP of technology planning at Verizon, recently reiterated to SDxCentral that the operator’s cloud-based network moves are fully internal.

“Our key difference [is] we have our own internal cloud, the hyperscalers are not in this equation for us,” Koeppe said. “Our goal in the beginning when we started down our virtualization path was to ensure that we had control over the customer experience on top of our own internal cloud. We have a whole series of tools for optimization, service delivery, pushing software orchestration and automation, all the bells and whistles, but our goal is always have control over that customer experience.”

Parulkar added that operators are indeed on different paths as they work toward deeper cloud integration.

“The ones who are who have made the leap of leveraging the cloud are ones who believe in it and they wanted to do that,” Parulkar said. “There are different levels of maturity and confidence levels in doing that.”