Amazon Web Services' (AWS) all-out incursion into wireless network infrastructure, a long feared but now largely assumed outcome, positions the cloud giant to play a bigger role in telecom’s future than any other company.

“Operators are using the cloud to transform the core of their businesses now, the networks and the systems that provide connectivity and services to customers,” AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said during his keynote at MWC Barcelona 2022. 

“They’re building cloud-native networks to reduce costs, to rapidly deploy new services, and to adapt quickly to varying network usage conditions,” he said.

Despite the company’s continued momentum with many of the world’s largest carriers, a good chunk of AWS’ aspiration in the very foundation of network infrastructure rides on Dish Network. The aspiring greenfield network operator is housing everything it can in the cloud, and for it that cloud is entirely AWS.

Unfortunately for AWS, Dish still doesn’t have a commercially available 5G open radio access network (RAN). Dish executives remain steadfast in their commitment to prove the company can and will meet its goal of becoming a nationwide 5G provider on a first-of-its-kind network architecture, but they also readily admit it’s been more difficult than expected.

The presumed outcome when or if Dish’s network is fully deployed remains significant. Businesses will gain the ability to customize and scale their network experience on demand and bring new 5G applications to market under a simplified deployment process, according to Selipsky.

“So now developers can use standard APIs to access network data and AWS services, and build applications that use that data like low latency, augmented reality, and gaming optimized for users’ devices,” he said. 

AWS, of course, has its tentacles in many other existing networks today, many which started with backend IT infrastructure. “Migrating IT infrastructure to the cloud not only removes a lot of the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure like servers, it also increases automation and cuts costs across all of these business processes,” Selipsky said.

Deutsche Telekom in 2019 set a goal to move nearly 60% of its applications to Amazon’s cloud and today the operator can get most of its IT projects to market in about 75 days compared to 18 months under legacy systems, he added.

Swisscom is also partnering with AWS and Ericsson to build a cloud-native standalone 5G core, resulting in “networks that can scale up and down at will in ways that simply weren’t possible before,” Selipsky said. 

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo turned to AWS and NEC to pilot 5G core network functions running on AWS-designed Graviton2 processors in the Tokyo region. The chips are placed in compute instances that increased price performance by up to 40% compared to previous generation processors, he added. “NTT expects that it will be able to cut energy consumption by as much as 30% when deploying its public 5G network.”

Selipsky also touched on AWS Wavelength, one of a few low-lying and more distributed clouds the hyperscaler is deploying to bring its compute, storage, and infrastructure services to enterprises that require hybrid architecture at the edge and connectivity delivered via wireless 5G networks.

AWS hasn’t announced any new telco customers using Wavelength, but Selipsky said more will be announced later this year. AWS Local Zones, which address situations where customers want AWS distributed in major metropolitan areas, currently reach 16 U.S. cities and the company plans to launch new Local Zones in 32 additional metropolitan areas in 26 countries.

Wireless operators' journeys on the public cloud are undergoing an adoption cycle that closely resembles and delivers the benefits early adopting enterprises enjoyed, Selipsky explained. 

“We’re partnering with many of you to reinvent communications together and drive innovation across your businesses. As 5G evolves, we’ll see all new applications that will create new revenue streams” in entertainment, robotics, autonomous driving, real-time monitoring, and other use cases, he said.