Telcos must evolve into 'Techcos' to stay competitive: Jayanth Nagarajan, AWS

The telecom industry is shifting as companies tackle rising costs, evolving customer demands, and the need for modernisation. To stay competitive, telcos are adopting cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and automation to improve efficiency and expand services. 

A major part of this shift involves partnerships with cloud providers like AWS, which offer the infrastructure and tools to support this transformation. From AI-driven network optimisation to private 5G deployments, telecom operators are exploring new ways to scale, cut costs, and enhance services. 

In a conversation with TechCircle, Jayanth Nagarajan, Head, Telecommunications Industry — Asia Pacific & Japan, AWS, shares insights on how telcos are adapting to these changes, the key challenges in cloud adoption, and which technologies are likely to have the biggest impact on the industry in the coming years. Edited Excerpts:  

How has the telecom industry evolved in the past year, what challenges has it faced, and how are companies adapting to new technologies and changes? 

Telecom providers play a crucial role in connectivity, serving increasingly demanding customers while managing costs. This creates challenges that AWS helps address, and leading telcos in the Asia-Pacific region are adopting AWS to drive innovation, speed, and scale. As they evolve into "techcos," they are moving beyond legacy constraints and leveraging the cloud to unlock AI’s potential. Their goal is to enhance customer experiences efficiently and sustainably while ensuring industry growth and reliable connectivity. 

This transformation is happening in three key ways. First, telcos are expanding beyond traditional connectivity services by offering new digital solutions. For example, Japan’s KDDI launched Wacom Cross, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform on AWS, to provide AI-driven logistics solutions. Second, AI is improving customer interactions and network operations. Malaysia’s U mobile integrated AWS AI solutions into its contact center, reducing resolution times and improving response accuracy. Third, cloud-based networks are becoming a scalable and cost-effective alternative for modernisation. Japan’s NTT DoCoMo deployed AWS-powered 5G Open RAN for resiliency and efficiency, while Australia’s Telstra partnered with AWS to test cloud-based network resilience, ensuring voice service continuity during disruptions.

By adopting AWS, telcos are driving efficiency, innovation, and reliability in a rapidly evolving industry.

You've shared a global perspective, how do you see India’s telecom industry evolving? 

India's telecom sector has made significant progress. At the Indian Mobile Congress, the minister noted that while India lagged in 3G, it kept pace in 4G and 5G and aims to lead in 6G. 

AWS has a long-term commitment to India, with two regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad and a planned $16.4 billion infrastructure investment by 2030, including $12.7 billion in upcoming investments. These investments support telcos in building cost-efficient, future-proof networks. 

AWS is already working with Indian telcos and enterprises. For example, TCS has developed an indigenous 5G SA core under the Make in India program, deployed in its Bengaluru 5G lab on AWS. TCS and AWS are also collaborating to enable enterprises to adopt private 5G for Industry 4.0 transformation. 

AWS’ ecosystem of ISVs, AI/Machine Learning (ML), and analytics services at the edge further supports businesses in leveraging private 5G to modernise operations and supply chains.

Many telcos face challenges with legacy infrastructure while transitioning to cloud-native architectures. What are the biggest obstacles in telco cloud migration, and how does AWS help address them? 

Telcos are leveraging AWS to reduce operational costs, improve network performance, and enhance customer experience. While automation and optimisation have long been priorities, AI, ML, and GenAI are now driving deeper efficiencies. For example, France’s Orange implemented a graph-based root cause analysis using Amazon Neptune and Bedrock, reducing diagnosis time from seven hours to seconds by consolidating thousands of alarms into a single report. NTT Docomo showcased similar technology at MWC Barcelona. In Korea, LGU Plus improved efficiency by using Amazon Bedrock to manage complex customer and product data while meeting strict security requirements. 

However, telcos face key challenges in this transformation. First, they need to be open to partnerships, adopting the best available technology and integrating it seamlessly into their operations. Industry forums are already helping facilitate such collaboration. Second, they must improve data quality and move away from siloed infrastructures toward unified data strategies. AWS has been supporting telcos in building data lakes and implementing better data management frameworks. 

A Sri Lankan telco CIO highlighted that with the right data approach, tasks like data preparation and ML model deployment, which previously took two months, now take just one to two weeks on AWS. This demonstrates that telcos willing to embrace modern technology and open collaboration can achieve significant efficiency gains. 

Beyond customer service chatbots, how can generative AI create real value for telecom operators, such as in network automation or fraud detection? 

AI and machine learning are not new concepts. Amazon has been investing in and deploying AI and ML for over 25 years. However, the current AI boom is driven by the explosion of available data, advancements in algorithms, and increased access to computational power through cloud computing. This combination is enabling telcos to reimagine customer experiences and optimise network operations in ways that were previously impossible. AWS is innovating across three layers of the generative AI stack to support telcos at different levels of sophistication. At the infrastructure layer, AWS provides purpose-built hardware like Trainium and Inferentia, along with third-party GPUs, for AI workloads. At the middle layer, tools such as Amazon Bedrock help build and scale AI applications. At the application layer, generative AI-powered solutions like Amazon Q allow non-experts to leverage AI without deep machine learning knowledge. 

For telcos, the ability to quickly innovate with AI is critical to driving business growth. AWS collaborated with Meta and BCG to develop a generative AI accelerator on Amazon Bedrock, helping two major South Asian telcos deploy AI use cases within weeks. These deployments resulted in a 10 times increase in conversion rates, a three-fold reduction in acquisition costs, and a 36% increase in upsell rates through AI-powered chatbots. While generative AI chatbots are common, these results highlight the impact AI can have on customer engagement. In network operations, examples like Orange and NTT Docomo demonstrate the potential of AI-powered root cause analysis, significantly reducing the time required to diagnose and resolve network issues. Future innovations will further enhance proactive issue detection and customer service capabilities. 

Beyond network operations, telcos can leverage AI to improve internal productivity. British Telecom, for example, implemented Amazon Q Developer to assist with coding, generating hundreds of thousands of lines of production-ready code. This has led to a 37% acceptance rate for AI-generated code suggestions, dramatically increasing developer efficiency. Lastly, one of the biggest challenges for telcos and other enterprises is upskilling employees to work with AI-driven technologies. AWS is investing heavily in training programs to bridge this gap. Since 2017, AWS has trained over 5.9 million individuals in India with cloud skills, with more initiatives planned to further support workforce development. 

AWS has been promoting private 5G solutions. How do you see enterprises using them beyond manufacturing and logistics? 

Manufacturing and logistics are key use cases for private 5G, but one major emerging theme is video analytics and security. Many private 5G deployments focus on ensuring privacy while also enhancing security and reliability. 

For example, AWS worked with SK Telecom in South Korea to embed Amazon’s machine learning models and video analytics into SKT’s cameras, creating a security-as-a-service solution that SKT could sell globally. Another use case is fault detection and workplace safety. In New Zealand, AWS partnered with Spark to deploy video analytics on a private 5G network to monitor human proximity to heavy machinery. If a worker came too close, an automatic alarm alerted supervisors, and equipment was shut down to prevent accidents. 

In North America, AWS collaborated with Hitachi and Ericsson on a private 5G network for an electric motor and battery manufacturing facility. Real-time video analytics helped reduce defects significantly while increasing the number of parallel production lines. These examples highlight how private 5G is driving operational improvements across industries through enhanced security, safety, and efficiency. 

Telcos used to see hyperscalers as competitors, but now they’re collaborating more. How do you see this partnership evolving in the coming years? 

We emphasise openness to partnerships, not replacing telco services. We recognise their critical role and back this commitment with significant investments. Across Asia-Pacific, we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars, and globally, hundreds of billions, to support telcos where they need augmentation and supplementation. 

Beyond infrastructure support, we help telcos export and monetise their innovations. Telcos are inherently innovative, developing solutions for their own use. Through AWS, we enable them to scale these innovations globally by leveraging our infrastructure, customer base, and partnerships. Whether it's TCS, SKT, or others, we help telcos bring their offerings beyond their local markets. 

Our role spans multiple dimensions: complementing telco infrastructure, enhancing operational efficiency, leveraging AI for scalability, and unlocking new revenue streams. By partnering with AWS, telcos can extend their reach and maximise the value of their innovations. 

If you had to pick one technology, AI, Edge, Private 5G, or something else, that will shape telecom in the next three to five years, what would it be and why? 

AI is set to be a game changer for telcos by supporting the entire end-to-end network. While it is already improving front-end customer service, it is increasingly transforming back-office operations, making them more efficient. The cloud enables telcos to scale these improvements. AI is also helping developers generate code faster, making networks more software-defined and efficient, and driving a unified data strategy across organisations instead of working in silos. AWS has been working with telcos worldwide, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, and this collaboration is expected to grow further.