Why BT & AWS Deal Powers AI-Ready Telecom Innovation
BT Group has announced an expanded five-year strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), strengthening its long-standing partnership to deliver smarter, faster and more reliable services for customers.
The collaboration builds on BT’s cloud transformation journey and forms a core part of its “Build, Connect, Accelerate” strategy, enabling it to modernise its technology and enhance customer experiences.
Driving a cloud-native future
The extended agreement moves BT Group beyond basic workload migration, accelerating its transition towards cloud-native architectures that deliver measurable benefits to customers.
Working closely with AWS Professional Services (ProServe), BT is replacing legacy systems with customer-centric microservices designed in alignment with the TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA).
By adopting this approach, BT can introduce innovations faster, improve service reliability and offer personalised digital experiences at scale.
Tom Meakin, Chief Strategy and Change Officer at BT Group, explained:
“This isn’t just a technology upgrade – it’s a customer promise. By modernising our systems with AWS, we’re creating the agility to respond to customer needs faster, deliver more reliable services and introduce new features that make everyday interactions with BT simpler and more secure.”
Enhancing customer value through innovation
The collaboration focuses on putting customers at the heart of BT’s digital strategy. Leveraging AWS capabilities allows BT to provide:
- Scalability: Services that adapt seamlessly to changing customer demand.
- Resilience: Greater reliability and improved service availability.
- Agility: Faster delivery of new features and updates based on customer feedback.
- Cost Efficiency: Reduced long-term operational costs through modernised infrastructure.
- Security: Advanced data protection and compliance standards, ensuring customer confidence.
Jan Hofmeyr, VP of Telecommunications at AWS, highlighted the value of the partnership:
“BT Group is putting customers at the centre of its continued cloud transformation. By working with AWS, BT is innovating faster, resolving issues more quickly and delivering smarter, more secure services that better serve today’s digital-first consumers.”
Building an AI-ready, autonomous network
BT’s new agreement with AWS supports its ambition to develop a self-healing, AI-driven network capable of anticipating and resolving issues before they affect customers.
By integrating AWS-powered machine learning and generative AI technologies into both its Mobile Core operations and Radio Access Network (RAN), BT is laying the groundwork for a distributed, AI-ready data platform.
The advancement will enable autonomous network operations, optimise performance and reduce service disruptions.
Tom added, “Our ambition is to build a network that thinks ahead – one that can fix itself before customers even notice a problem. We’re in the early stages of this process, but through our work with partners like AWS, we’re one step closer to making it a reality.”
- Simplified Payments: BT is redesigning its payments platform to make setting up and managing direct debits easier and more secure. Using tokenised, reusable data across brands and channels, customers benefit from greater confidence and reduced friction.
- Smarter Service Delivery: A new engineering workflow platform integrates order tracking, field task management and subcontractor coordination in one interface. It enables BT to manage installations and engineer visits more efficiently and with greater accuracy.
The extension of the partnership demonstrates how BT Group and AWS are reshaping the future of telecommunications.
By combining BT’s industry leadership with AWS’s cloud and AI expertise, the companies are creating next-generation networks that are smarter, more autonomous and more customer-centric.
The agreement illustrates BT’s long-term vision: to deliver faster innovation, greater resilience and AI-powered experiences that set a new benchmark for the telecoms industry.
