Broadcom launched an ambitious reinvention of VMware’s Telco Cloud platform, offering new ways for carriers to power new revenue beyond connectivity.

Debuted at Mobile World Congress 2026, VMware Telco Cloud Platform 9 is built on the flagship VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9, but features industry-specific capabilities that Broadcom claims will offer estimated cumulative total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of 40% over five years compared to siloed architectures.

“Hardware costs are spiraling out of control, and the global demand for memory resulting from AI will further accelerate rising server prices,” Paul Turner, Broadcom’s chief product officer for its VCF division, explained. “VMware Telco Cloud Platform, built on the industry’s most widely-deployed private cloud platform technology, helps telcos dramatically reduce both their capex and opex.”

Among the additions to the reinvented platform are offerings that Broadcom claims will help carriers looking eagerly at sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure for new ways to generate revenue.

Chief of the strategic reposition additions is a GPU virtualization offering allowing carriers to run high-performance workloads simultaneously, like AIOps for self-healing network management and sovereign edge applications.

Also, top of the line are GPU-as-a-service capabilities, providing on-demand access to virtualized GPU power to enable service providers to scale AI infrastructure as needed, while keeping proprietary data logically isolated.

Further additions to Broadcom’s VMware Telco Cloud Platform are a service that simplifies the creation of AI agents; built-in automation tools to speed up deployments of private AI environments; and "private AI-as-a-service," which offers secure turnkey AI environments.

The additions aim to see operators bet their infrastructure on a Broadcom-owned platform by providing them with the means to capture new revenue streams increasingly drawing attention from across the telecom space.

“VMware Telco Cloud Platform 9 will empower telco operators to deliver the secure, sovereign, AI-native infrastructure that drives next-gen technology adoption, revenue acceleration, and lowers costs,” Turner added.

The shadow over the relaunch

Broadcom’s latest platform rework has sought to lean heavily on TCO and efficiency savings, touting its ability to reduce costs for memory, server, and storage by 38% via software optimizations like non-volatile memory express (NVMe) tiering.

But the relaunch comes at a delicate moment for Broadcom's VMware division, chiefly since various changes have caused consternation relating to costs for some customers.

One such cost casualty was Boost Mobile (formerly Dish Networks), once the Telco Cloud Platform’s flagship customer, but opted to swap out its legacy VMware-based container-as-a-service (CaaS) platform for one from Wind River. Boost Mobile's CTO stated the change was due to the carrier not wanting to be “price gouged.”

Even Nokia, which provided a supportive quote in Broadcom's announcement, has shifted its primary cloud infrastructure development to Red Hat, though it continues to validate network functions on VMware's platform.

“The integration with VMware Telco Cloud Platform shows how Nokia’s multicloud strategy helps telecommunication providers ensure requisite automation, security, resilience, and scaling,” Kal De, SVP for core software at Nokia, said. “By using our cloud-native core network portfolio on VMware TCP, telcos can monetize their core networks with total confidence on the cloud platform of their choice, while reducing operational risk and accelerating time to market.”