From Core to Edge: Telco Modernization Today

Telecommunications leaders are navigating one of the most challenging periods in the industry’s history. Investments in 5G infrastructure now measure in the billions, while rising operating expenses and market competition leave little room for missteps. 

This means that modernization has become essential to operational excellence and long-term relevance. The strongest technology transformations address today’s needs while laying a foundation for future innovations. And a resilient infrastructure helps enterprises retain a competitive stance when deploying new services, responding to market shifts, achieving updated sustainability metrics or integrating emerging technologies. 

With the right infrastructure, telcos can advance their efficiency, strengthen security and open new revenue streams, meaning that the 5G telco cloud is becoming a key enabler of these goals. 

Unlock efficiency at scale

When designed to balance control with growth potential, infrastructure becomes a catalyst for operational efficiency. To meet rising demands and expectations, communications service providers need flexible architectures that perform at scale — without adding friction.

Open, cloud native platforms support this kind of business evolution. They unify management across distributed, multi-vendor environments. When a platform provides central management of the radio access network, core and edge, teams experience tighter coordination, clearer workflows and faster execution. This architecture can also support OSS/BSS modernization, enabling the integration of legacy systems with new, cloud native functions without disrupting service continuity. In addition, zero-touch provisioning and lifecycle automation can keep systems current without compromising availability, further reducing the time between planning and rollout.

These operational gains compound quickly in an enterprise environment:

• Updates can deploy with fewer risks
• High-value services can reach customers sooner 
• The resulting capacity enables you to redirect effort from reactive firefighting to proactive initiatives.

With an open source foundation, these benefits persist even as teams switch tools, vendors or strategies. Open source platforms are built on widely adopted, standards-based interfaces. They allow you to add new functions without stopping to rewrite core logicensuring that different workloads can run in different environments. This versatility helps you avoid months-long migration efforts and other lock-in risks with an open source approach supporting full ecosystem disaggregation. Operators gain flexibility to select best-of-breed components, maintain leverage in vendor negotiations and reduce the risks associated with single-supplier dependency.

Build security and compliance into every layer

A communications service provider’s approach to security and compliance can significantly influence its ability to adapt over time. Upfront architectural choices shape your capacity to balance regulatory requirements with pressure to innovate through AI, edge or partner-driven services. In this context, telco infrastructure must provide both run time security for data in motion and conformance to evolving industry standards. When governance is built directly into the platform, teams can adopt new technologies more quickly and confidently. Changes can happen without jeopardizing security, performance or compliance posture.

Modern, carrier-grade infrastructure should include embedded governance features such as data sovereignty and access controls. Integrated supply chain integrity measures and independently verifiable standards — such as FIPS and Common Criteria certifications — give CSPs the confidence to serve customers across jurisdictions. Unified management platforms can enhance continuity across your stack, ensuring that governance stays intact as your infrastructure continues to evolve.

The demands of new workloads, such as artificial intelligence, amplify the advantages of proactive security and compliance strategies. If you cannot quickly roll out new data protections or model governance, AI initiatives risk regulatory pushback and erosion of customer trust. In addition, the longer that legacy systems go without modernization, the more security and integration challenges accumulate. That technical debt can make future retrofits significantly more complex and costly. By prioritizing compliance, auditability and policy enforcement today, tomorrow’s forward-thinking initiatives can progress with fewer obstacles.

Platforms built with transparency and modularity can further increase this potential. Solutions such as SUSE Telco Cloud support secure deployment of AI applications alongside enterprise-grade policies and auditability. With oversight infused into every infrastructural layer, organizations can be ready to meet tomorrow’s requirements — even if those requirements have yet to be defined.

Expand opportunities for revenue

Legacy service models are straining under the weight of rising capital and operational expenses. As core connectivity offerings become harder to monetize, CSPs are pursuing infrastructure-focused monetization as well as portfolio expanding service opportunities.

AI is already helping telcos uncover and capture new value. Intelligent automation can optimize network performance and reduce support costs, while analytics unlock personalized services that increase customer loyalty. Edge computing can extend processing power closer to users, enabling ultra-low-latency use cases in immersive media and smart infrastructure.

By exposing application programming interfaces, operators can make select network functions available to partners through secure, self-service access. These expanded service models go beyond legacy offerings and enable participation in the growing developer economy.

Sustainability-focused capabilities, such as dynamic energy optimization, can help you meet Environmental, Social and Governance goals while also differentiating service portfolios. Platforms like SUSE Telco Cloud can increase efficiency for resource intensive workloads, without compromising performance and provide the documentation required for environmental accountability.

Drive results with proven strategies

The impact of modernized infrastructure is both measurable and notable. For example, Orange recently adopted an open telco cloud architecture to streamline service delivery across multiple countries. 

Automation and interoperability have cut integration times for new network functions, allowing Orange to adapt quickly and stay competitive. Today, their solution supports millions of daily connections while maintaining carrier-grade reliability across the entire footprint. Agility and scale are working in tandem, creating a network that’s both flexible and dependable.

With SUSE Telco Cloud, these outcomes are due in part to seamless integration with the diverse solutions of network equipment providers, independent software and hardware vendors, and global systems integrators. Because of the platform’s design, enterprises can leverage their existing investments and partner expertise, further enhancing and streamlining modernization efforts.

Accelerate your cloud native transformation

Telco transformations succeed when vision meets grounded execution — when leaders can reimagine what’s next without compromising stability or limiting choice. As operations are unified across the network, teams can focus on delivering and diversifying services rather than wrestling with fragmented tools.

SUSE Telco Cloud is built to support this kind of transformation. Its open, container native architecture simplifies the management and delivery of services across complex, multi-environment networks. Proven in demanding, carrier-grade settings, the platform incorporates hardened Kubernetes distributions and automation practices such as GitOps. As a result, deployments are consistent, secure and efficient.

By reducing integration overhead and supporting faster iteration, it gives leaders the flexibility to adapt — and the confidence to translate modernization momentum into long-term business growth.

Explore how SUSE Telco Cloud could transform your business.