Conquering telco cloud-native complexity: A live discussion with Boost Mobile
June 19, 2026
Cloud-native is one of telecom's defining ambitions.
What does it take to become truly cloud-native and what role does autonomy play in the journey?
On this week's Zero-Touch Live, Rakuten Symphony's Anshul Bhatt speaks with Boost Mobile's Dawood Shahdad, SVP of Hybrid MNO Network, and Sruthi Nair, Director of Voice Core Engineering, about building one of the few operator networks running fully cloud-native on public cloud.
📺 Watch the replay now below.
The foundation must come first
Boost kicked off its network build by creating a deliberate constraint: every network function had to run cloud-native and on public cloud, with no exceptions. Everything that has been deployed since, from unified observability to closed-loop automation, builds on that key decision. Anshul, Dawood and Sruthi unpacked what this foundation has made possible, including:
100% cloud-native. Virtual machines that take a minute to boot cannot scale a voice network in real-time when traffic spikes or an outage hits, making a mix of VMs and PNFs limited when it comes to implementing AI. Boost runs every function as a CNF on AWS across a multi-vendor stack.
A single pane of glass across the stack. Boost is taking advantage of vendor-agnostic observability spanning packet core, IMS and messaging, removing the need to run and correlate a separate EMS for every vendor. This frees engineers to focus on feature development and insight-driven decisions.
Closed-loop automation. The framework reads alarms in context, leaving low-impact issues to engineers and acting only on defined criteria.
Culture as the real transformation. Dawood and Sruthi framed autonomy as a people and mindset shift that must happen before technical transformation, requiring departmental silos to be broken down and thinking three to five years ahead when making strategic decisions.
A blueprint built for global scale. Boost's network in the public cloud can be replicated on demand rather than rely on acquiring or building data centers across continents. That positions the cloud-native core to support direct-to-device and seamless coverage between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.
Cloud-native is not the finish line.
As a result of careful planning, defining tech decisions and diligent execution, Boost Mobile is poised to capitalize on a range of benefits, spanning autonomy, global reach and new revenue opportunities.
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