- AT&T is migrating a significant amount of IT and other critical workloads to AWS Outposts
- The operator will supply fiber to AWS to bridge the gap between the cloud provider's hyperscale backbone and enterprise customers
- Amazon Leo will help AT&T provide satellite connectivity for business customers
AT&T is going all-in on AWS. The operator is undertaking what AWS executive Amir Rao called a "massive scale" migration of critical IT and operational business support applications to on-premises AWS Outposts environments as part of a larger agreement between the pair that also includes fiber and satellite connectivity.
"When I say it's going to be an industry trendsetter, I really mean that," Rao, Director of Product Management for Telco and 5G at AWS, told Fierce. "This is not just one or two or five or 10 racks of Outposts. This is almost an entire estate of workloads across multiple locations."
AT&T has existing cloud partnerships in place with Google Cloud for 5G and edge services enablement and with Microsoft, which hosts the operator’s 5G core. An AT&T representative told Fierce that using Outposts alongside other cloud offerings "enables us to diversify and optimize our hybrid strategy, ensuring greater flexibility, resilience and efficiency across both cloud and on-premises environments." The move will also help AT&T enable "infrastructure as code, automation and use of hardened security patterns, reducing manual work and improving operational control," the rep said.
Rao said AT&T plans to use AWS Transform — as well as tools like Amazon Q and agentic services — to cut migration time from months to days.
He characterized the deal as a huge win for AWS and validation of the idea that the cloud provider can offer a "complete cloud continuum" with consistent tooling across environments.
"It will break the myth that a move to the cloud means off-premises," he said. AWS already carries a significant amount of user plane traffic in production today, and the deal with AT&T shows it can also handle operator IT, OSS and BSS workloads, Rao noted.
"Practically, this means it can replace your historically private cloud offerings built on different stacks," he explained. "It’s exactly the same service and that will accelerate the modernization and migration for a lot of our customers and a lot of other telcos who, for any number of reasons, want to retain their workloads on-premises."
Easing a business bottleneck
The deal between AT&T and AWS also includes fiber and satellite components.
Notably, AT&T will provide high-capacity fiber to bridge the gap between AWS' hyperscale backbone infrastructure and enterprise customer locations, Rao said.
AWS previously struck data center fiber arrangements with Lumen and Verizon, but Rao said the arrangement with AT&T is "focused more on connecting to our points of presence" and alleviating an existing bottleneck for business customers.
The announcement comes just three months after AT&T launched its Express Waves product to capitalize on rapidly growing demand for data center connectivity. Rao declined to comment on whether Express Waves was part of the deal or what kind of bandwidth AT&T will be providing.
"This collaboration with AWS marks a pivotal step forward in shaping the future of connectivity in the United States," Shawn Hakl, SVP of Product at AT&T Business, stated. "Fiber is the foundation of that future — it delivers the speed, capacity and reliability that modern networks demand.”
Beefing up satellite capabilities
AT&T is also beefing up its satellite position, adding Amazon Leo as a connectivity partner to provide internet services to business customers. The operator also counts AST SpaceMobile as a satellite partner.
The AT&T representative noted that while AST SpaceMobile is focused on direct-to-cell service for mobility customers, Amazon Leo will help it deliver fixed broadband for enterprise users. "This new agreement with Amazon LEO does not impact our relationship or plans with AST SpaceMobile," the rep stated.
It’s unclear, however, when and how much fruit the Amazon Leo partnership will bear. The satellite player recently revealed it is running significantly behind its expected launch schedule. Amazon Leo told the Federal Communications Commission it currently only has 180 satellites in orbit and expects to have less than half of its 1,600-satellite constellation airborne by the middle of this year.
2/4/26 4:30 pm ET: This story has been updated with comments from AWS' Amir Rao, AT&T and to reflect that the fiber component is focused on last mile connections from points of presence to enterprise locations rather than connectivity between AWS data centers.