Japan’s NTT DoCoMo will deploy its nationwide 5G open radio access network (RAN) in a hybrid cloud environment running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It's a move that further interlinks next-generation open telecommunication architectures and cloud hyperscalers.

The agreement will see NTT DoCoMo use AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Anywhere container management platform to host the 5G open RAN system. EKS Anywhere allows customers to run either platform across their current AWS cloud or on-premises environment and manage those deployments from a single console. In this instance, it will be used to automate cluster management and for integration with AWS services running in the hyperscaler’s different regions.

AWS last month announced plans to invest $15 billion to expand its existing cloud infrastructure in Tokyo and Osaka. The move will bring AWS’s total investment in the country to $25.5 billion by 2027, and is expected to contribute nearly $40 billion to Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) and more than 30,000 jobs each year, according to an AWS Economic Impact Study for Japan.

As part of the NTT DoCoMo deal, AWS is also joining NTT DoCoMo’s OREX initiative, which is designed to provide network operators with customizable options of precertified open RAN components. These are packaged for RAN, service NFV management and network orchestration (MANO) and services.

Sadayuki Abeta, global head of open RAN solutions at NTT DoCoMo, told SDxCentral at last fall’s MWC Las Vegas event that the OREX platform is designed to simplify the deployment of open RAN. Abeta said this includes challenges with integration, balancing power consumption with performance and the operation of an open RAN ecosystem.

OREX launched with 13 vendor partners, including AMD, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, Mavenir, NEC, NTT Data, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Red Hat, VMware and Wind River.

NTT DoCoMo this week also expanded its work with NEC, selecting the vendor to provide virtualized RAN (vRAN) equipment for the carrier’s 5G network. NEC was already providing NTT DoCoMo virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) equipment for the carrier’s 4G LTE and 5G mobile core network.

AWS’s NTT DoCoMo deal builds on the hyperscaler’s telecom progress.

Its most extensive operation might be underpinning Dish Network’s cloud-based 5G network deployment.

Ishwar Parulkar, CTO for telecom and edge at AWS, told SDxCentral in an interview last year that work has shown the different challenges in running a telecommunications network compared to typical cloud workloads.

“Packet core is a different workload than the other workloads we are running,” Parulkur said. “We had to look at how we could improve our cloud networking, how we could enhance some of our performance required for packet processing to run networking workloads. And this is a journey we’ve been on. We have been on this path for the last two, three years in just making the cloud capable of running these workloads.”

He specifically noted that cloud relies heavily on compute and storage, with simple “networking as an enabler. … You know, one interface, one or two IPs, and so forth.”

But “with network workloads, [it] was the flip. Compute was very simple. If you look at the packet core, it’s a few instances and not a large amount of compute,” Parulkur explained. “But the networking was where the complexity was. We needed multiple network interfaces, we needed millions of IP [addresses] because a lot of devices connect to the system, so we had to reorient our thinking to building some of our infrastructure services to account for that.”

Chivas Nambiar, GM for AWS’s telco business unit, during a press briefing last week said the hyperscaler was continuing to see steady progress in discussions with operators looking to tap into a hybrid cloud architecture, though those discussions are becoming more pointed.

“What we're finding is a lot of this discussion is anchored around data and how do you protect the data, how do you protect access to the data,” Nambiar said. “Telcos who have worked with AWS in the past have a pretty deep understanding about how we protect their data. We don't have access to it. Nobody else has access to it. It's under the control of the operator themselves. They are obviously cautious about it because they're … nationally critical infrastructure. But … where the use case merits it, they're willing to move forward, and we're willing to move fast.”

Nambiar added that he expects this work to accelerate as “intelligence needs to be driven into using this data to actually act on the network. There's going to be this push for more of that work to happen in the cloud, and I think, fundamentally, more of these workloads are transitioning into the cloud then staying on-prem.”