• TelecomTV recently conducted its second Cloud-Native Telco Market Perception Survey
• We asked network operators which of their peers they regard as the cloud-native telco sector pioneers
• Rakuten Mobile and Deutsche Telekom took the top spots, with Orange in third

Rakuten Mobile is the network operator sector’s leading cloud-native telco pioneer, with Deutsche Telekom not far behind, according to the results of a survey conducted by TelecomTV that have just been published in our Cloud-Native Telco Market Perception Report.

We asked executives from a broad range of operators to participate in our second Cloud-Native Telco Market Perception study (the first was in September 2023), and received responses from 35 individuals representing more than 20 (mostly Tier 1) network operators in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The job titles of the respondents ranged from CTO/CTIO and chief telco cloud executives to multiple group technology VPs, operations managers, network planners and more. 

We posed a number of questions about cloud-native telco progress, including one that asked our respondents about which of their fellow network operators they regarded as cloud-native telco pioneers. We provided a lengthy list of options and our respondents could select as many as they deemed appropriate – they were also able to suggest others they regard as cloud-native telco pioneers.  

That Rakuten Mobile received the most support – 51% of our respondents identified the Japanese operator as a pioneer – is perhaps not a great surprise. As a greenfield operator without any legacy it was able to adopt cloud-native processes and associated technologies from the beginning, and talked a lot about how it was doing so and achieving significant operational efficiencies and agility as a result. 

But with support from 49% of our respondents, Deutsche Telekom was not far behind in second place and this appears to be a testament to its long-standing cloud-native strategy which, as Franz Seiser, VP, Tribe Lead T-DAT at Deutsche Telekom Technik, explained during the DSP Leaders World Forum earlier this week, is delivering positive results, including cost and resource efficiencies. Seiser was the co-host for the event’s cloud-native telco session, which is now available to view on demand. 

Orange has also long discussed its cloud-native strategy which, as with Deutsche Telekom, is giving it a great foundation for its adoption of AI and the exposure of its cloud platform via network application programming interfaces (APIs). Its Pikeo project has been the foundation for much of its cloud-native progress – see Pikeo project helps Orange make cloud-native strides.

Many other operators received various levels of support – you can see the full list by downloading (for free!) the full 13-page Cloud-Native Telco Market Perception Report.

We also asked our respondents whether telcos need specialist in-house cloud-native teams, posed questions about the readiness of telcos and vendors for the cloud-native era, and asked our network operator respondents about which vendors they regarded as cloud-native telco leaders, when once again Red Hat came out top – see Red Hat retains its cloud-native telco crown.

For the full list of our free-to-download DSP Leaders reports, check out the TelecomTV reports section. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV