BT is betting millions on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Wavelength platform to boost its competitive cloud, mobile edge computing (MEC), and enterprise position in the United Kingdom.

The U.K.-based telecom giant said it was investing multi-millions of dollars to combine AWS’ Wavelength platform running on BT’s EE 5G and 4G LTE mobile infrastructure in the U.K. This will involve a new Wavelength Zone in Manchester that can support enterprises within a 100-kilometer radius, including Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and Blackpool.

AWS’ Wavelength deployments include compute and storage services deployed at carrier edge locations and are targeted at allowing the deployment of low-latency services. Since it’s embedded into BT’s EE network, all application traffic can reach application servers running in the AWS Wavelength Zone without leaving BT’s network.

BT is touting Wavelength support for enterprise IoT applications like autonomous warehouses and health care services. BT’s Wholesale unit has been running a trial in Manchester, and said it plans to roll out the AWS Wavelength service to enterprises across the U.K. in the coming years.

AWS initially expanded into Manchester last year in a deal with telecom giant Vodafone. That followed AWS’ initial European Wavelength deployment running on Vodafone’s German network.

AWS unveiled its Wavelength service at its annual re:Invent show in 2019. This was tied to a deal with Verizon as the first telecom operator to use the service, which it has expanded to nearly 20 locations across the U.S. The carrier has said 75% of the U.S. population is now within 150 miles of its Wavelength Zones.

AWS currently counts Wavelength customers in the United States, the United Kingdom Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Canada. It also has deals with Bell Canada, SK Telecom, and Dish Network.

The hyperscaler also supports telecom operators with its Local Zones and Outposts platforms. AWS has 31 open Local Zones around the world, with 21 more announced. It’s Outposts platform runs as an on-premises option, which Ishwar Parulkar, CTO for telecom and edge at AWS, recently told SDxCentral was supporting more than 200 Private 5G deployments.

Jan Hofmeyr, VP for Amazon EC2, recently told SDxCentral that the vendor’s goal is “to make AWS the best place to run 5G networks.”

“That is the overarching objective,” Hofmeyr said during AWS’ re:Invent 2022 conference. “How can I make AWS, whether we are running it in the region, in a Local Zone, on an Outposts, on a Snow device, how do we make it the best place to run a 5G network, and then provide that infrastructure.”

The Wavelength push expands BT’s efforts to cloudify its network operations.

The telecom giant late last year drove a partnership with its EE service and CK Hutchison Holdings’ Three to trial a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) 5G service in Leeds.

The C-RAN architecture uses a centralized baseband unit (BBU) pool, remote radio units (RRUs), and a transport network between the two. The BBU is the brains of the outfit where all of the processing is accomplished. The RRUs are the actual radio transmitting units that send out the signal as told to it by the BBU. The transport part is the connection between the two and is analogous to a fronthaul connection in a more traditional network deployment.

This deployment architecture can lead to lower the total cost of ownership as BBU resources can be shared; can improve low-latency network performance by allowing for more easily deployed radio units closer to an end-user application; and allow for centralized management of RAN resources.