By Clara-Laeila Laudette and Supantha Mukherjee
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Swisscom plans to switch to the cloud platform of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a range of applications which power its enterprise resource planning, operational support system, and analytics and contact center.
The Swiss telecom operator and AWS said in a joint statement they will also look to migrate Swisscom’s 5G network built on current infrastructure to a new, standalone 5G network powered by AWS’s cloud platform.
Standalone networks offer higher capacity and faster speeds which make it possible to apply new 5G use cases such as driverless cars or remote, high-fidelity medical consultations.
Telefonica has also been working with AWS in Brazil to deploy a standalone 5G core network. AWS is working with an increasing number of telecom operators, including Verizon, Vodafone and Dish.
“It is fundamentally a good idea for tech operators to move to the cloud… it’s going to give them low cost, agility and innovation,” Adolfo Hernandez, vice president of global telco business at AWS, said in an interview.
AWS is looking to open data centres in Zurich, allowing Swisscom to process customer data in the country and deliver real-time services with low latency.
Swisscom plans to explore new customer experiences using machine learning and AI features from AWS for its TV and online services.
The initial work would centre around enterprise IT, and then both companies will work with Ericsson to explore how to build the 5G core network on the cloud, Hernandez said.
(Reporting by Clara-Laeila Laudette and Supantha Mukherjee in Barcelona; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
