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An AWS re:Invent Telco Experience '22

AWS re:Invent, the final installment in this year’s hyperscaler event trifecta, is happening next week. There is SO MUCH CONTENT for telcos! We were impressed with the red carpet that Google Cloud Next rolled out for telcos, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) is taking it to a whole new level. I mean, this place has everything!

Attending AWS Re:Invent 2023? Meet you there! Book a meeting with Totogi →

To see all the telco content, go to the Session Catalog and then filter by Industry > Telecommunications, or check out this handy attendee guide just for telco. There’s so much, it’s kinda insane. Luckily, I went through it for you! I earmarked the top two sessions for telcos, and compiled a longer list of other standouts.

For those outside of North America who don’t want to pull an all-nighter or wake up god-awfully early, everything should be available on-demand within hours of the live sessions.

Two can’t-miss sessions

DISH’s 5G wireless deployment on AWS: From Region to edge

We love DISH Wireless’s approach to its new 5G network, which is all-in on AWS and Open RAN. It’s exactly what I tell all telcos to do. We also love Scott Stimson, recently promoted Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, who will be co-presenting with Sundeep Goswami from DISH. They’ll dive into how they’re building the industry’s first standalone, cloud-based 5G Open RAN wireless network.

This session is the star of the show, IMO.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 1:45-2:45 PM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 9:45-10:45 PM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 5:45-6:45 AM SGT

AWS: A great way to run 5G networks

DISH is already doing it, so what’s your plan? Attend this session to understand your options for deploying public and private 5G wireless networks on AWS. You can learn how AWS can help you build your own 5G network. You can also hear the AWS pitch to enterprises about how they can use private 5G.

Session Time

Tuesday, November 29, 2:45-3:45 PM PST

Tuesday, November 29, 10:45-11:45 PM GMT

Wednesday, November 30, 6:45-7:45 AM SGT

Best “big picture” sessions

re:Invent is delivering great content for telcos that are just starting their move to the cloud, or still thinking about it. These are good survey sessions that cover what’s possible, what AWS offers, how it can help you, how you can work together, etc.

AWS wherever you need it

Still kicking the tires on the public cloud? Watch this session for an overview of how the hyperscaler can deliver cloud infrastructure and services wherever you need them—from the cloud to edge locations like your on-prem data centers and 5G towers. Presenters will cover lots of real-life use cases from lots of industries to get you thinking about the possibilities.

Session Time

Thursday, December 1, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM PST

Thursday, December 1, 7:00-8:00 PM GMT

Friday, December 2, 3:00-4:00 AM SGT

Reinventing communications, together

Here’s another good survey class, but specifically for telcos, presented by AWS’s head of the telco business unit, VP Global Telco IBU Adolfo Hernandez. He’ll talk about a lot of different things at high level, including real-world examples of how AWS is working with communication service providers (CSPs) like you.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 8:30-9:30 AM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 4:30-5:30 PM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 12:30-1:30 AM SGT

Coinventing connectivity with CSPs

Where does telco end and AWS start? Last year’s bombshell announcement about AWS Private 5G got telco tongues wagging. This session will cover the various AWS connectivity services (Private 5G, Direct Connect SiteLink and Cloud WAN), their benefits, and the opportunities they provide CSPs to grow revenue.

Session Time

Monday, November 28, 2:30-3:30 PM PST

Monday, November 28, 10:30-11:30 PM GMT

Tuesday, November 29, 6:30-7:30 AM SGT

How to deploy a private mobile network within days using AWS Private 5G

This is a good one for the enterprise side of your telco house to learn about how AWS has simplified the procurement and deployment of a private mobile network. It’ll cover the main use cases for private mobile networking and provide a look into some actual customer deployments. Ride the dragon!

Session Time

Tuesday, November 29, 5:00-6:00 PM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 1:00-2:00 AM GMT

Wednesday, November 30, 9:00-10:00 AM SGT

AI-powered contact centers are key for successful organizations

Bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning to your contact centers can increase subscriber loyalty, reduce churn and even grow sales. This session covers services available and best practices for better self-service, call analyzation, and insights from conversations.

This session also repeats later in the week on either December 1 or 2 depending on your time zone.

Session Time

Tuesday, November 29, 2:45-3:45 PM PST

Tuesday, November 29, 10:45-11:45 PM GMT

Wednesday, November 30, 6:45-7:45 AM SGT

Hear from telcos working with AWS

Lots of telcos are working with AWS, and they’re here to tell you about it. It’s a rare chance to see what your competitors are doing.

Bringing 5G edge cloud deployment flexibility to New Zealand

Spark, the largest telco in New Zealand, worked with AWS and Mavenir to build New Zealand’s first standalone 5G network, and completed two proof-of-concept trials. Both used Mavenir’s 5G standalone core network solution, with one deployment on AWS Snowball Edge, and the other on AWS Outposts.

You can also catch a repeat of this one on either December 1 or 2 depending on your time zone.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 8:30-9:30 AM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 4:30-5:30 PM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 12:30-1:30 AM SGT

Telco as a service: Future of digital with AWS and Vodafone

Vodafone is working with Google Cloud Platform on a huge data project AND working with AWS to design and deliver digital services. Telco as a service (TaaS), per Vodafone, is a platform that will help the company transform from a telco to a tech-co (an ambition we’ve covered in a TelcoDR blog before). The plan is that TaaS will help the company achieve its goal of having 50% of its global workforce engaged in software development, delivering 60% of digital services in-house, two years from now. This session should be interesting for telcos looking to speed their technical product development.

Session Time

Monday, November 28, 1:00-2:00 PM PST

Monday, November 28, 9:00-10:00 PM GMT

Tuesday, November 29, 5:00-6:00 AM SGT

Telenet’s journey to become a next-generation, data-driven organization

If you love learning about all the cool stuff you can do with your subscriber data and want to hear from someone else besides Vodafone, this one’s for you. Belgian CSP Telenet is working with AWS to not only use data to help its telco business, but also to become an entertainment provider!

Session Time

Thursday, December 1, 1:15-2:15 PM PST

Thursday, December 1, 9:15-10:15 PM GMT

Friday, December 2, 5:15-6:15 AM SGT

Verizon Connect transformation through their journey to the cloud

Learn from another telco that’s really doing it! This session seems like it’ll be a kind of “report from the trenches” about the migration journey: challenges with latency requirements, business transformation, platform modernization, and making Verizon Connect a more exciting place to work with all this cool, cutting-edge tech.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 4:00-5:00 PM PST

Thursday, December 1, Midnight-1:00 AM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 8:00-9:00 AM SGT

Bring your own laptop

Get ready to show off your coding skills! These sessions give you hands-on experience building a 5G network, migrating databases, and deploying applications at the edge – so bring your laptop because you’re about to write some code. Sounds scary, but could be fun.

Building an end-to-end 5G network on Amazon EKS in 15 minutes

Fifteen minutes? That sounds crazy, but we know one of the speakers—Vamsy Chemitiganti—so we’re sure this session will be a good one. Send a brave person to learn about using cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs). The description says it’ll be an “end-to-end walkthrough on how to deploy 5G core and RAN using open-source components.” Sweet.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 1:45-2:45 PM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 9:45-10:45 PM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 5:00-6:00 AM SGT

Migrate relational databases to Amazon RDS or Aurora using AWS DMS & SCT

If you loved our blog about how AWS ditched Oracle, you’ll love this. AWS engineers show you how you can do it too, using the same tools they used. Break away from your Oracle shackles!

Session Time

Tuesday, November 29, 11:45 AM-1:45 PM PST

Tuesday, November 29, 7:45-9:45 PM GMT

Wednesday, November 30, 3:45-5:45 AM SGT

Network functions in AWS Local Zones for edge compute

For all you edge guys out there, this might help with your metaverse thinking. You’ll go through an actual deployment of a workload in an AWS Local Zone and an AWS Region.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 6:15-8:15 PM PST

Thursday, December 1, 2:15-4:15 AM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 10:15 AM-12:15 PM SGT

Building a hybrid Telco Lake solution

Want to catch up with Vodafone’s Google project? This is another hands-on session, and it will demonstrate how to break down your data silos, correlate different datasets, and democratize using the AWS Lake Formation. Good way to start that insights project you’ve been meaning to move to the cloud.

Session Time

Wednesday, November 30, 10:00-11:00 AM PST

Wednesday, November 30, 6:00-7:00 PM GMT

Thursday, December 1, 2:00-3:00 AM SGT

A few of us from TelcoDR are going to the live event in Las Vegas. Get in touch if you want to meet while we’re there!

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