International roaming speeds are usually slower than those on a provider’s own network because traffic has to be routed through its home country. This could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a new collaboration between Telus, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Samsung.
The new approach, known as network cloudification, enables Telus to house its network within AWS regions worldwide, using virtualized roaming gateways, which means traffic no longer needs to go through Canada, but will be routed directly to the closest AWS region that houses Telus’ network.
“Alongside our AWS Partners, we are excited about how Telus is using the cloud to augment their network capabilities to provide consistent and reliable global services for their customers,” said Chivas Nambiar, general manager, telco business unit at AWS.
The approach uses cloud-native Core technology from Samsung on public cloud for mobile data, and Germany-based ng-voice for voice calls.
“Samsung’s Cloud-native Core is designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. By ensuring higher stability and reliability, Samsung powers Telus’ new roaming approach to bring unmatched network performance and customer experiences while traveling,” said Stephen Wiktorski, vice president and head of networks at Samsung Canada.
Telus said that the possibilities of this collaboration could extend far beyond roaming, notably with Samsung’s full Cloud-native Core solution on AWS, paving the way for advancements in disaster recovery and 5G standalone core use cases.
Virtual roaming gateway trials will begin in Q1 2024.
