Telcos are set to spend billions on new cloud infrastructure

Almost half (46%) of telco network capacity will be entirely cloud-native in the next 3-5 years, hinting at huge investments to come, a new report has claimed.

To get to this stage, research from Capgemini has been suggested that telco companies are predicted to invest an average sum of $200 million each per year.

As if the incentives weren’t clear enough, Capgemini also reckons that early adopters will be able to make large proportions of their money back fairly quickly.

Telco cloud investments

Early adopters of cloud-based telco platforms are expected to make back as much as 47% of their investments within the 3-5 year period.

Part of this will come from the optimizations of the total cost of ownership for the networks, which is expected to get a 13% saving. Early-mover status is also attributable to the return on investment predictions. 

The cloud transformation is said to be an enabler of next-generation technologies, such as smart factory automation; private 5G networks at distribution centres, ports, oil fields, mines, chemical storage, and processing units; remote surgeries; AR/VR or Metaverse-enabled remote operations, monitoring, and training.

Finally, with our growing need for data storage and communications, combined with the increasing pressure for greener solutions, telco companies hope their cloud investments will enable them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5%.

According to Capgemini, many of our favorite Telco companies have already started their transitions. AT&T announced in 2021 that it would move its 5G mobile network to Azure, while O2 Telefonica said that it would be transitioning part of its 5G network in Germany to the cloud in partnership with Google Cloud and Ericsson.

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