• Google Cloud has built a massive global network for its own use 
• Now it is opening up that network to offer commercial wide area network (WAN) services, dubbed Cloud WAN, to enterprises and telcos 
• AI is identified as the catalyst for Google Cloud’s move
• BT and Lumen Technologies are two of the early Cloud WAN partners

Google Cloud has opened up its massive global data network to external users with the launch of Cloud WAN, a “fully managed, reliable, and secure enterprise backbone to transform enterprise wide area network (WAN) architectures,” the hyperscaler announced on the opening day of its Google Cloud Next 25 event. 

The cloud giant’s network, built up over many years to enable secure, high-speed data transfers to and from its datacentres, is extensive: “With 202 points of presence (PoPs), powered by over 2 million miles of fibre, 33 subsea cables, and backed by a 99.99% reliability SLA [service level agreement], Google’s network provides a robust and resilient global platform,” it boasts. In addition, the network has more than 3,000 media content delivery network (CDN) locations. 

Google Cloud has also re-engineered its network with “new design principles” in recent years to cope with its own AI-fuelled demands – as Bikash Koley, VP of global networking and infrastructure at Google Cloud, notes in his blog, from 2020 to 2025, the hyperscaler’s WAN bandwidth “grew a whopping 7x” mainly because of the demands of AI workloads.

As a result, Google Cloud says its network has “exponential scalability”, what it calls “beyond 9s” reliability (in reference to the ‘five 9s’ network availability that is a gold standard for telcos), intent-driven programmability and network automation processes that have reduced failure mitigation times from hours to minutes, according to Koley. For the full details of how Google Cloud claims to have achieved these design principles, see Koley’s blog.   

This is the kind of network, Google Cloud argues, that enterprises need for the challenges of the “AI era”, which puts greater demands on network service requirements than the cloud era, streaming era or internet era (see Google Cloud’s network evolution timeline below). 

And here’s the Google Cloud pitch for potential customers: “Cloud WAN provides up to 40% faster performance compared to the public internet, and up to a 40% savings in total cost of ownership (TCO) over a customer-managed WAN solution.” 

The move appears to make a lot of sense for Google Cloud, which is already engaging with the enterprise sector for its cloud and wants to tie those companies in to as many of its services as possible, especially as businesses continue to explore the many options that AI can offer (with Google pushing its Gemini generative AI option to enterprises and consumers alike). 

It also once again raises the ‘frenemy’ question for telcos. Google is an important and major partner to the telecom operator community, as are all of the hyperscalers, but now it is positioning itself as a direct competitor in the WAN services sector. 

However, the number of companies with which it is directly competing in the long-distance international network services sector is relatively limited – Cloud WAN is actually more likely to be welcomed by most telcos than seen as a threat. International network infrastructure is costly to run and delivers only very low margins – it’s a tough business to be in. Google Cloud, meanwhile, already has its own global network and needs it to be state of the art to meet its own internal requirements, and now it feels like it can tap some AI-fuelled demand by offering a service that, when all things are considered, makes business as well as strategic sense.  

Remember, Google has had a run at traditional telco services already with Google Fiber, its high-speed access service. In launching that service and building those access networks, Google found that telecom is a tricky and resource-intensive business that delivers little in the way of profit margins and, consequently, Google Fiber still exists but on a very limited scale – it has been more of an experiment than a business. 

The difference with Google Fiber and Cloud WAN, though, is that Google didn’t have any of its own fibre access infrastructure to start with and, when there was enough demand for its Google Fiber services, it had to go to the expense and bother of building a network and running it – after 15 years it is still operating and launching into new urban markets in the US but it’s still fairly limited. 

For Cloud WAN, it already has the network and it’s already running it to high specifications.

This looks like good news for enterprises because if the network is good enough for Google, then it’s got to be good enough for them, right? (As long as the price, contract details and customer support also fits the bill, of course.)

Telcos get on board

It’s also good news for telcos that want to offer an international service but don’t have a network of their own – Cloud WAN essentially gives them another international connectivity option beyond the likes of Arelion, Colt Technology Services, Exa Infrastructure, NTT Data, Orange (Business/Wholesale), PCCW, Sparkle (Telecom Italia), Tata Communications, Telxius, (Telefónica), Zayo and others. 

In fact, UK national operator BT and US enterprise service provider Lumen Technologies have already signed up to leverage Cloud WAN’s reach and capabilities. 

In BT’s case, it sees Cloud WAN as a great fit for the Global Fabric platform in which it has invested during the past few years and which has recently started offering commercial services. BT says it is “combining the power of Global Fabric with Cloud WAN” by “pre-integrating Cloud WAN’s low-latency subsea optical links into Global Fabric. Customers will have a wide selection of high-speed, reliable routes for their digital workloads, all available at the click of a button on Global Fabric’s web portal. They’ll be able to create fully modern, high-performance, secure and resilient flexible networks for their business – meaning they can put their foot to the floor with their AI plans,” states BT in this press release. 

In addition, BT says it is also offering its enterprise customers Google Cloud Partner Interconnect via Global Fabric in 50 of the world’s top cloud locations, growing to 70 by 2026. “This will give customers instant connectivity into Google Cloud, with a 99.99% reliability service level agreement (SLA) backed by BT and Google Cloud,” says to BT. (It’s worth noting that this is a service offered by the international arm of BT Business – as previously reported, that international operation is under review, with BT seeking potential partners or co-investors while it focuses its efforts and attention on UK operations.)

For Lumen, it is partnering with Google Cloud to “deliver advanced cloud and network solutions that meet the rising demands of enterprise customers – particularly amid the rapid growth of AI workloads across industries,” with the partnership revolving around three key initiatives: The integration of Cloud WAN with Lumen’s connectivity services; the provision by Lumen of direct 400Gbit/s fibre connections from Google Cloud regions to customer locations, a move that will directly connect 50,000 enterprise locations to Google Cloud infrastructure; and the connection of Lumen’s encrypted network to Google Distributed Cloud “air-gapped” deployments (which are completely isolated from other network infrastructures) to meet US Department of Defense security standards.  

“Networks are the foundation of the AI revolution,” stated Dave Ward, chief technology and product officer at Lumen. “By combining Lumen’s deep fibre footprint and secure networking capabilities with Google’s global cloud reach infrastructure, we’re giving enterprises the ability to move data faster, more securely, and with the flexibility required to support advanced AI workloads and distributed cloud environments.” 

You can read more about Lumen’s Cloud WAN partnership in this blog. 

So the move is significant, but Google Cloud is not the first hyperscaler to offer commercial WAN services using its own network infrastructure – Amazon Web Services announced AWS Cloud WAN in 2021 and started offering a commercial service in July 2022. 

That the hyperscalers are developing and offering such services to the broad enterprise market, and that related partnerships are being struck with traditional communications service providers, “signals the latest shift in the market, as the supply and value chains shift in a ‘co-opetitive’ market” as “sophisticated global telcos shift towards solutions and integration services,” notes GlobalData principal analyst Rob Pritchard, who has been tracking the enterprise telco service sector for decades. 

He adds that it’s significant that “these Cloud WAN services from AWS and Google are being made available via partnerships with the likes of BT and Accenture” and that the success of such services “ultimately boils down to ownership of the customer relationship, which is where telco service providers have an advantage with their long relationships and breadth of services” and the help they provide to enterprises to source and manage the best cloud options. 

That said, the telcos “must be a bit frightened by the ongoing encroachment onto their territory” by the hyperscalers, adds Pritchard. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV