AT&T’s ascension to the cloud reached another milestone this week. The operator signed a multi-year agreement with Tech Mahindra that calls for the IT consultancy to assume management of many of the applications that support AT&T’s network.

The deal is reportedly valued at $1 billion and represents the India-based firm’s largest deal in at least five years. Tech Mahindra has been pushing deeper into the telecom sector and expects momentum to continue as 5G deployments continue around the world. “Tech Mahindra is betting big on [the] 5G network of the future and is focused on technology-led innovation to enable digital transformation,” said CP Gurnami, CEO of the company, in a prepared statement.

AT&T has been on a tear as well. Since mid July the company has inked major multi-year deals — some also valued in the billions — with IBM, Microsoft, and Dell Technologies. The operator claims its 5G network is the “first network born in the cloud,” and the deals each represent an increasingly polished hybrid cloud strategy for the company.

AT&T, which was already a long standing Tech Mahindra customer, says the expanded effort will lead to a more advanced SDN as it strives to move the majority of its non-network workloads to the public cloud by 2024.

“Our agreement with Tech Mahindra is another step forward in delivering greater flexibility across our IT operations. This includes optimizing our core operations and modernizing our internal network applications to accelerate innovation as we march forward to our goal of a nationwide 5G network by the first half of 2020,” AT&T Communications CIO Jon Summers said in a prepared statement.

Chris Penrose, president of advanced mobility and enterprise at AT&T, highlighted the operator’s efforts in 5G, the cloud, edge computing and IoT, during an on-stage interview earlier this week at the Mobile Future Forward conference.  “AT&T’s got a lot of investments going on in all of these places,” he said, adding that the company has been “leaning forward when it comes to 5G.

As AT&T accelerates on its nationwide 5G deployment plan it’s being deliberate about landing partnerships that deliver new value and capabilities, Penrose explained. “You’ve got to start with a use case in mind” and focus on what enterprises are trying to solve, he said. 

“We do see an opportunity to be able to create a consolidated offer, a network edge offering that includes edge computing and cloud,” Penrose said, referencing AT&T’s agreement with Microsoft that’s reportedly valued at more than $2 billion.

“We do have a lot of facilities that are good locations” for edge computing and “we’re doing a very aggressive build to make sure we can meet the requirements,” he said. “Remotely controlling anything is a whole new use case” for all kinds of industries, he added.

AT&T says its goal of aggregating functionalities and improving business processes played heavily into its expanded partnership with Tech Mahindra. “Our aim is to significantly boost AT&T’s 5G time-to-market and simultaneously reduce their costs of ownership by automating aspects of their network lifecycle,” said Manish Vyas, CEO of Tech Mahindra’s network business, in a prepared statement.