UK telco BT Group has expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), signing a new five-year agreement with the cloud provider.

The deal builds on BT's ongoing cloud migration to AWS, and aims to help BT move its legacy systems into "modern, customer-centric microservices."

The company describes it as changing BT's cloud journey from a workload migration to "cloud-native upgrades." The telco hopes this will improve its scalability, resiliency, agility, and cost efficiency.

“This isn’t just a technology upgrade – it’s a customer promise,” said Tom Meakin, chief strategy and change officer at BT Group. “By modernizing our systems with AWS, we’re creating the agility to respond to customer needs faster, deliver more reliable services, and introduce new features that make everyday interactions with BT simpler and more secure.”

“BT Group is putting customers at the center of its continued cloud transformation,” added Jan Hofmeyr, VP of telecommunications at AWS. “By working with AWS, BT is innovating faster, resolving issues more quickly, and delivering smarter, more secure services that better serve today’s digital-first consumers.”

In addition to furthering the migration efforts, BT will add AWS capabilities into its mobile network for both core operations and its Radio Access Network (RAN). The telco is also using AWS' machine learning and generative AI technologies to automate several operations at its Network Operations Centre.

“Our ambition is to build a network that thinks ahead – one that can fix itself before customers even notice a problem,” said Meakin. “We’re in the early stages of this process, but through our work with partners like AWS, we’re one step closer to making it a reality.”

BT Group previously sold its Irish data center business as part of its broader strategy to transition away from owning and operating data centers and toward partnering with globally scaled organizations. The company is exploring CDN and Edge services, and was hiring for a principal solution architect in June 2025.

Several telcos globally are adopting cloud computing technology. Earlier this year, Finnish telco DNA announced it was migrating some workloads to Google Cloud, and other telcos such as Singapore's M1 and Switzerland's Sunrise have made similar moves.

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