The companies will create North America’s first virtual roaming gateway, improving reliability, speed and latenc

Samsung Electronics, TELUS and Amazon Web Services announced  a trailblazing collaboration that will see TELUS become the first telecommunications provider in North America to evolve the architecture of roaming, enabling greater reliability and faster speeds for customers traveling abroad.

Traditionally, roaming traffic (voice, data and SMS) is routed through the provider’s home country, resulting in slower speeds for customers. With this revolutionary new approach, TELUS is able to house their network within AWS Regions worldwide, using virtualized roaming gateways. This means that traffic no longer needs to go through Canada, but will be routed directly to the closest AWS Region that houses TELUS’ network, significantly enhancing speed and responsiveness of mobile services. This process, also known as network cloudification, uses Cloud-native Core technology from Samsung on public cloud for mobile data, and ng-voice for voice calls, optimizing performance and ultimately quality.

“This architecture evolution further strengthens TELUS’ commitment to keeping our customers connected to what matters most, ensuring they are able to enjoy the same award-winning experience they have in Canada from anywhere in the world,” said Nazim Benhadid, Chief Technology Officer at TELUS. “Together with AWS, Samsung and ng-voice, we are making roaming more reliable and resilient than ever.”

“We are thrilled to work with TELUS, a company at the forefront of re-inventing the telco customer experience,” said Chivas Nambiar, general manager, telco business unit at AWS. “Alongside our AWS Partners, we are excited about how TELUS is using the cloud to augment their network capabilities to provide consistent and reliable global services for their customers.”

“Samsung’s Cloud-native Core is designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. By ensuring higher stability and reliability, Samsung powers TELUS’ new roaming approach to bring unmatched network performance and customer experiences while traveling,” said Stephen Wiktorski, Vice President and Head of Networks at Samsung Canada. “By working with forward-looking operators like TELUS, we are able to turn never before seen possibilities into reality.”

Virtual roaming gateway trials will begin in Q1 2024, but the possibilities of this collaboration extend far beyond roaming. Leveraging Samsung’s full Cloud-native Core solution on AWS paves the way for further advancements in disaster-recovery and 5G standalone core use cases.