Podcast

Ep 116 – You CAN run the network on AWS’ public cloud (Ishwar Parulkar)

May 26, 2025

This week’s guest

Dr Ishwar Parulkar

Chief Technologist, Telecom AWS

The debate over whether telco network workloads can run on the public cloud has raged for years. While greenfield operators like DISH Wireless have demonstrated that a cloud-native 5G network is possible, critics dismiss these examples as outliers that don’t apply to established networks. But recent developments with brownfield operators and new infrastructure options are changing the conversation about what’s possible.

In this episode, I’m talking with Dr. Ishwar Parulkar, Chief Technologist for Telecom at AWS. With extensive experience creating cloud solutions for telecom networks, Ishwar is at the forefront of helping operators transition their networks to cloud infrastructure.

Listen now to hear:

How AWS has created an “edge continuum” of infrastructure options to support network workloads [05:25];
What AWS learned from working with Telefónica Germany to run network workloads in a brownfield environment [07:31];
How telcos are leveraging generative AI to transform customer experience, reduce operational costs, and create new revenue streams [11:41];
Whether AI RAN workloads will be a new revenue source [15:03].

Links and resources

Take a look at how Telefónica Germany successfully completed a trial to load 1 million subscribers into the public cloud.
Read the AWS announcement on the New AWS Outposts Rack and Server Offerings for Telcos.
Watch my interview with Chris Penrose at NVIDIA about AI-RAN and using the extra capacity in the RAN to run AI workloads at the edge.
Take a look at how SK Telecom built a specialized telco AI model trained with Anthropic’s Claude on AWS.
Learn more about how British Telecom is using Amazon Q to enhance developer productivity.
Come see me June 3-4 in Windsor, England at Telecom TV’s DSP Leaders World Forum. I’ll be on Tuesday’s panel, Leveraging AI throughout the network, and hosting a garden party that night!
Ready for a movie night? Try this homemade popcorn recipe.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.

Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

Guest bio

Dr. Ishwar Parulkar is the Chief Technologist for Telecom and Edge Cloud at Amazon Web Services. In this role he is responsible for setting AWS technology strategy, defining new cloud services and leading initiatives to enable AWS’ edge cloud offerings and next generation telecom networks and services. Prior to AWS, Dr. Parulkar was a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco and Chief Architect for business units responsible for telecom routing, mobile packet core, small cell and network orchestration products. He was a founding member of industry-wide initiatives around mobile edge computing and 5G and the conviction that cloud technology can transform the telecom field brought him to AWS in 2016. Before Cisco, Dr. Parulkar was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems where he led the design data center computing infrastructure, including the first multi-core processor systems and first compute virtualization platforms in the industry. He started his career at Apple, where he worked on the Mac desktop/laptop product lines and on the Newton PDA technology, which had the seeds of the iPhone revolution.

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