Telecom carriers have spent years treating core network functions, the actual systems that route calls and data, as something too sensitive to hand over to a public cloud provider. Vodafone just ran a trial suggesting that line is starting to blur, putting Nokia’s voice and data core systems on AWS infrastructure in Frankfurt to see whether public cloud could handle work this critical.
The trial, run jointly with Nokia and AWS, tested two specific pieces of Vodafone’s IoT connectivity platform: voice services running through Nokia’s IP Multimedia Subsystem, including emergency calling functions used in vehicles and elevators, and data services through Nokia’s Packet Core, tested using smart metering applications for utilities. Both ran as cloud-native functions on AWS, using Elastic Kubernetes Service to manage containers and EC2 for raw compute capacity.
What Vodafone was really testing wasn’t just whether the system worked, but whether cloud infrastructure could expand network capacity faster than traditional methods allow. According to the company, the cloud-based setup is designed to add capacity within days rather than the longer timelines typical of legacy network buildouts.
Marco Zangani, Vodafone’s director of network strategy and architecture, said the trial validated AWS as a viable option for running core network functions and tied into the company’s broader push toward a multi-cloud approach. Nokia’s Kal De framed it similarly, saying the test demonstrated that carrier-grade performance doesn’t have to stay locked to dedicated, on-premises infrastructure.
The stakes here go beyond one trial. Vodafone’s managed IoT platform already supports more than 240 million connections globally, and the broader cellular IoT market hit 4.7 billion connections last year, according to IoT Analytics, with growth expected to push past 9 billion by 2030. If running core network functions on public cloud holds up at scale, it could meaningfully change how fast carriers can expand coverage and add new capacity.
Vodafone says the next phase will focus specifically on security and data sovereignty, with commercial trials planned later this year, a sign that even as the technical case improves, regulatory and trust questions still stand between this experiment and a wider rollout.
