Belgian operator Citymesh launched a commercial mobile service on 5G core software-as-a-service (SaaS) powered by Nokia and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Claimed to be the first operator-facing commercial mobile service on 5G core SaaS via a hyperscaler, Citymesh's offering targets enterprises across aviation, health care, events, offshore, emergency, drone, and transport sectors. The service also complements Citymesh's new mobile platform for self‑employed professionals and small medium enterprises (SMEs).

Delivered by Nokia's Core SaaS for Business, and running on Amazon's global cloud infrastructure, the partnership touted a multiregion design for telecom‑grade availability and strict security governance, while handling volatile demand spikes across various enterprise environments. With the SaaS model’s inherent elasticity, the deal touted operators could avoid upfront infrastructure investments for the same results.

"With Nokia’s core SaaS on AWS, we can scale faster, reduce complexity, and upfront investment, and deliver secure, high-performance connectivity tailored to our enterprise customers," Citymesh CTO Robin Leblon said of the launch. "And what’s more, it allows us to develop a telecom offering tailored for all businesses."

"Telecom SaaS represents a paradigm shift in the telecommunications industry," Kal De, SVP of core software product and engineering at Nokia, added. "Partnering with leaders like AWS helps us deliver cloud-native infrastructure that makes advanced connectivity simple and intuitive for providers, allowing them to subscribe to services only when needed and growing their spend with demand. This groundbreaking announcement by Citymesh proves that 5G core SaaS has moved from concept to production-ready reality."

Nokia is not the only telecom vendor to partner with a hyperscaler for 5G-based SaaS; Ericsson, for example, tapped Google Cloud last year to deliver Ericsson On-Demand, a carrier-grade 5G core SaaS offering available initially for private wireless.

This week saw Ericsson expand its relationship with Amazon to launch an agentic rApp service on AWS Marketplace. The Swedish vendors offers its operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) on AWS, while Ericsson’s Cognitive Network Solutions has worked on AI agent-driven autonomous network ventures with Amazon's cloud arm.