du, the UAE’s leading telecom and digital services provider, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Nokia to advance the UAE’s digital transformation by cloudifying its Radio Access Network (RAN). The collaboration was showcased at Mobile World Congress 2025, where AWS and Nokia presented a joint demonstration of a 5G Cloud RAN solution at the AWS booth.
This partnership will leverage AWS’s cloud infrastructure powered by AWS Outposts and Nokia’s anyRAN approach to offer enhanced flexibility, openness, and security in Cloud RAN. With this collaboration, du aims to accelerate its digital transformation ambitions, improving network performance, scalability, and flexibility to deliver innovative services to its customers.
Saleem AlBlooshi, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of du, emphasized that the collaboration with AWS and Nokia will enable du to enhance its network’s efficiency, create new opportunities, and provide real value to customers. Du will deploy Nokia’s Cloud RAN solution using AWS’s cloud services to explore key use cases in wireless networks and RAN Edge, introducing Cloud RAN while maintaining performance consistency with du’s existing network infrastructure.
The deployment will utilize AWS’s cloud continuum across du’s 5G network, expanding to the edge and providing a common framework for automation, security, and observability. This solution will enable du to speed up the time to market for new use cases, particularly for latency-sensitive applications. Du will also use Amazon EKS and AWS Telco Network Builder (TNB) for scalable management and automation.
Amir Rao, Director for Telco 5G at AWS, highlighted the flexibility of the solution, powered by AWS Outposts Graviton3 servers, which brings the best of AWS services to the edge for critical RAN software. Mark Atkinson, Senior Vice President and Head of Radio Access Networks at Nokia, emphasized that this collaboration shows how Nokia’s anyRAN approach provides a scalable, flexible path for cloud-based RAN architectures, supporting the dynamic needs of the UAE market.
This hybrid RAN strategy seamlessly integrates du’s purpose-built infrastructure with cloud-native solutions, offering unmatched flexibility and scalability, enabling advanced edge use cases and AI-driven applications in industries such as manufacturing, energy, and logistics.
