Microsoft highlights cloud capabilities for operators and developers at Mobile World Congress

Mobile World Congress 2023 is underway, bringing together major telcos like T-Mobile, Telefonica, AT&T, and Ericsson. Microsoft announced new hybrid, operator, and developer capabilities at the event. The new offerings are intended to support modern connected apps with new network infrastructure, as part of a pivot to 5G and low latency.

Microsoft moved to expand its Azure for Operators portfolio with the public preview of Azure Operator Nexus, a hybrid cloud platform for communications service providers. The offering entered private preview at MWC 2022, with capabilities intended to reduce total cost of ownership through security, deployment, and management for workloads on-prem and in Azure.

To accelerate deployment, Microsoft also announced Operator Nexus Ready to certify cloud-native network functions, virtual network functions, and other interoperable software. Azure Communications Gateway entered general availability to connect public switched telephone networks to Microsoft Teams, to support Operator Connect and Teams Phone Mobile. A private preview of Azure Operator Voicemail, in turn, allows customers to migrate their voicemail services to an Azure managed service.

Throughout the end of 2022 and 2023, Microsoft has repeatedly touted its support for OpenAI, seizing headlines with its ChatGPT offering. The company announced the public preview of two new AI-related services this week. Operator Insights can collect network data from multi-vendor network functions, whereas Operator Service Manager manages services across hybrid cloud sites.