Abstract

The telco-cloud relationship outlined in our earlier report (“ANZ Telco-cloud market overview – benefits and risks of co-opetition”) is based on a strong and diverse partnership model.

ANZ telcos have assembled an array of partnerships with global cloud infrastructure and service providers over the last fifteen years. These started with deals to cross-promote cloud applications and connectivity, but have grown and evolved into strategic relationships that end from product development through to network operations. Cloud providers are similarly dependent on telco connectivity to manage and deliver their services to end-users.

There are tensions between telcos and cloud providers as they battle for the dominant position in the customer relationship with customers, particularly in the large enterprise segment. But the depth of these relationships means that simple competition is not a realistic option, with the two sectors seemingly destined to operate as ‘frenemies’.

Australia partnership analysis

The major Australian telecommunications operators have forged deep, multi-faceted relationships with the three global cloud hyperscalers. These alliances encompass internal transformation, joint product development, and integrated go-to-market strategies. Each operator has adopted a distinct approach, reflecting its market position, strategic priorities, and technical legacy.

Telstra: The multi-cloud behemoth

As Australia’s incumbent and largest telecommunications provider, Telstra has executed a highly sophisticated and deliberate multi-cloud strategy. Rather than treating the cloud providers as interchangeable vendors, Telstra has allocated specific strategic domains to each partner, leveraging their strengths to drive different aspects of its business. This approach is not merely about avoiding vendor lock-in; it is a nuanced strategy to optimise its internal transformation, network innovation, and global connectivity ambitions.

Microsoft Azure

The relationship with Microsoft Azure represents Telstra’s most significant and comprehensive cloud partnership. A landmark five-year strategic agreement, announced in July 2022, formally designates Microsoft as Telstra’s preferred cloud partner, particularly for its internal transformation and enterprise go-to-market initiatives.

The core of this alliance is a massive internal modernisation project. Telstra has set an ambitious goal to migrate approximately 90% of its applications to public cloud infrastructure by 2025, with Azure serving as the primary destination. This undertaking is central to Telstra’s T25 growth strategy, designed to simplify its IT environment, reduce operational costs, and significantly accelerate the speed at which it can develop and launch new products and services for customers.

Beyond internal transformation, the partnership establishes a powerful joint go-to-market engine. A dedicated end-to-end Microsoft practice has been created within Telstra Purple, the company’s technology consulting and managed services arm. This unit is tasked with co-developing and selling industry-specific solutions that combine Telstra’s market-leading network connectivity with Microsoft’s technology stack, including Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams. The initial focus is on key sectors such as manufacturing, retail, agriculture, utilities, and finance, aiming to provide comprehensive digital transformation solutions to business customers. Telstra holds all six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations in Australia, demonstrating deep capability across the entire Microsoft Cloud Partner Program.

The partnership also creates a powerful network synergy. Under the agreement, Microsoft will become an anchor tenant on Telstra’s new ultra-fast intercity fibre network and will explore boosting its capacity on Telstra’s extensive Asia-Pacific subsea cable network. This provides Microsoft with unparalleled, high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity for its own services, including Microsoft Teams and the Xbox gaming network, while securing a major, long-term customer for Telstra’s core infrastructure assets.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Telstra’s partnership with AWS is strategically focused on co-innovation at the intersection of the network and the cloud, particularly for emerging technologies like 5G and edge computing. A framework agreement announced in January 2021 established a strategic collaboration to develop differentiated multi-access edge computing (MEC) solutions.

The primary goal of this collaboration is to integrate AWS edge compute solutions, such as AWS Outposts, directly with Telstra’s 5G network. This architecture allows application traffic from 5G devices to be processed at the network edge, within Telstra’s infrastructure, without needing to traverse the public internet to a central cloud region. This dramatically reduces latency and enables a new class of resilient, high-performance applications for use cases like autonomous industrial equipment, smart cars and cities, and immersive entertainment. An example of this co-development is the “Branch Offload” solution, Australia’s first 5G-enabled edge computing offering for enterprises, which blends Telstra’s connectivity with Microsoft Azure Stack Edge, indicating a multi-cloud approach even within the edge domain.

To support this innovation agenda, Telstra has invested heavily in building its AWS capabilities. The company is an accredited AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, holding competencies in Migration, DevOps, Networking, and is a member of the AWS Managed Service Provider Program. A key pillar of the collaboration is a massive upskilling initiative, with Telstra establishing an “AWS Cloud Guild” to train more than 4,000 employees on AWS cloud technologies by 2025. This deep expertise allows Telstra Purple to design, deliver, and support transformative AWS solutions for its customers.

Telstra also leverages its AWS partnership to deliver specific customer solutions. It has adopted Amazon Connect, AWS’s cloud-native contact centre platform, to reimagine its own customer service operations as part of its T25 strategy. This move to a flexible, AI-powered platform is designed to create a more personalised and efficient multi-channel customer experience. For enterprise clients, Telstra provides management and visibility of AWS and multi-cloud environments through its proprietary Telstra Cloud Sight™ platform.

Google Cloud

The relationship between Telstra and Google Cloud is primarily centred on foundational global infrastructure, specifically the construction and operation of subsea cable systems. This leverages Telstra’s long-standing expertise in international connectivity and Google’s need for massive, reliable data transit between its global data centres.

In January 2024, Telstra International announced a ground-breaking collaboration with Google and APTelecom on the “Central Pacific Connect” initiative. This project involves the construction of two new submarine cables: “Bulikula,” connecting Guam and Fiji, and “Halaihai,” connecting Guam with French Polynesia. Telstra will own and operate a fibre pair on the Bulikula cable, significantly enhancing connectivity and redundancy across the Pacific.

Furthermore, Telstra is partnering directly with Google on the “Tabua” cable project. Combined with the Central Pacific Connect initiative, these new systems will dramatically diversify the network paths between the US mainland, Australia, Guam, and other Pacific islands, bolstering the resilience of the region’s digital infrastructure. While not a direct partnership with Google Cloud’s service platform, this collaboration on critical infrastructure is fundamental to the performance and reliability of all cloud services in the region.

A historical point of commercial interaction, though not a cloud partnership, involved an agreement where Google shared advertising revenue with Telstra for pre-loading Google Search on Android devices. This arrangement drew scrutiny from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for its potential impact on competition.

Optus: Application-centric innovation

Optus, Australia’s second-largest telco, has pursued a multi-cloud strategy that appears to be driven by a “best-of-breed” philosophy. Rather than assigning broad domains to its partners, Optus has forged distinct, high-profile alliances with each hyperscaler to solve specific business problems or to build a particular application-layer capability. This approach focuses on leveraging the perceived leadership of each cloud provider in a specific functional area to achieve tangible business outcomes.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The cornerstone of the Optus-AWS relationship is a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) announced in October 2020. The overarching goal of this agreement is to position Optus as a “leading supplier of integrated cloud solutions in Australia,” moving beyond pure connectivity to offer end-to-end services.

Under the SCA, Optus established a dedicated business unit to work in concert with AWS Professional Services. This unit provides a comprehensive suite of cloud services to Australian businesses, including consultancy, advisory, migration, and managed services. Key differentiated offerings that Optus brings to market through this partnership include specialised solutions for VMWare Cloud on AWS and SAP on AWS, addressing common and complex enterprise migration needs.

A critical component of the collaboration is a significant investment in human capital. Optus launched the “Optus Cloud Academy,” a large-scale internal training program with the goal of equipping an estimated 2,000 employees with AWS cloud skills. The telco aims to achieve more than 600 AWS accreditations over three years in areas spanning cloud infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT), data and analytics, security, 5G, and edge computing. This commitment underscores the strategic shift from reselling cloud to building a credible, in-house delivery and management capability.

As a subsidiary of Singtel, Optus also benefits from the broader group’s extensive AWS expertise. The Singtel Group holds numerous AWS Competencies, including in Government Consulting, Microsoft Workloads, and the emerging field of Generative AI. These capabilities are leveraged through a group-wide Solution Centre of Excellence (SCoE), providing Optus with access to a deep pool of certified cloud architects and proven methodologies.

Microsoft Azure

The partnership between Optus and Microsoft is focused on two key areas: modernising Optus’s internal data infrastructure and delivering integrated modern work and communication solutions to enterprise customers.

A landmark initiative, announced in March 2025, saw Optus partner with a consortium including Microsoft, Tech Mahindra, and Databricks to implement a Unified Data Platform (UDP). This project, powered by Microsoft Azure, was the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region. It involved replacing multiple legacy, on-premise data warehouses with a modern, cloud-native lakehouse architecture. The migration has yielded significant efficiency gains, reducing core operational data processing time by up to 50% and data engineering pipeline development time by up to 20%. The Azure-based platform provides Optus with a scalable foundation to accelerate its use of advanced technologies like generative AI and machine learning for creating more personalised customer experiences.

For its enterprise customers, Optus leverages its status as a Microsoft Modern Work Solutions Designated Partner to offer “Microsoft Teams Calling with Optus”. This solution provides a fully integrated voice service within the Microsoft Teams platform, allowing users to make and receive calls to the public telephone network directly from their Teams client. By acting as a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Optus can offer exclusive pricing and simplified licensing, bundling its carrier-grade voice network with the popular collaboration platform. This partnership builds on a long-standing relationship, with Optus having joined Microsoft’s Cloud OS Network as far back as 2015.

Google Cloud

Optus’s collaboration with Google Cloud is a prime example of its application-centric strategy, focusing specifically on leveraging Google’s leadership in AI to transform its customer experience (CX).

Announced in July 2025, Optus co-developed a cutting-edge “agentic AI” solution named “Optus Expert AI” with Google Cloud. This tool is built on Google Cloud’s Customer Engagement Suite and utilises its advanced AI capabilities, including the Gemini large language model. The solution is designed to empower Optus’s frontline staff, not replace them. It works in real-time during live customer interactions, analyzing conversations across voice and chat, providing contextual guidance, summarising insights, and suggesting optimal next actions for the human agent.

A notable aspect of this partnership is the depth of the collaboration. Optus was one of the first enterprise customers globally to co-develop and test this solution directly with Google’s engineering teams over a nine-month period. This allowed Optus to shape the design, architecture, and features of the platform ahead of its planned white-label release by Google Cloud to the broader market. This deep engagement demonstrates a strategic commitment to using best-of-breed AI technology to create a tangible competitive advantage in customer service.

Vocus: Connectivity king

Vocus, a key player in Australia’s fibre and network solutions landscape, has established strategic relationships with major cloud service providers Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. By offering secure, high-performance connectivity and engaging in deeper collaborations that range from joint infrastructure projects to becoming a customer of their services, Vocus has a role as a key partner in the Australian cloud ecosystem for Google, AWS, and Azure.

These collaborations are centred around Vocus’ core offering, “Cloud Connect,” which provides businesses with direct, private, and high-speed connectivity to public cloud platforms, bypassing the public internet for enhanced security and performance. These partnerships extend beyond mere connectivity, with Vocus engaging in deep, infrastructure-level projects and even becoming a customer of these cloud giants, solidifying a multi-faceted strategic alignment.

Google Cloud

Vocus is involved in significant infrastructure initiatives, including the “Australia Connect” and “Pacific Connect” subsea cable projects. This collaboration points to a deep-seated partnership aimed at enhancing the underlying infrastructure that powers cloud services in the region. The technical integration is also well-established, with Vocus providing detailed support for customers connecting to Google Cloud Interconnect.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Vocus not only facilitates customer access to AWS but is also a significant customer of its services. The company has notably migrated its own contact centre operations to Amazon Connect and its retail Business Support Systems (BSS) to AWS. This dual role as both a provider and a consumer of AWS services fosters a strong, symbiotic partnership, giving Vocus firsthand insight into the benefits and intricacies of the platform it connects its customers to.

Microsoft Azure

Vocus leverages its extensive fibre network to provide direct and reliable access to Azure’s cloud services via Cloud Connect. A notable example of this strategic alignment is the partnership with NEXTDC, BHP, and Microsoft for a new data centre in the Pilbara region. In this venture, Vocus is providing the critical fibre backbone, enabling businesses in the resource-rich area to access low-latency and high-capacity connectivity to Microsoft’s cloud offerings.

TPG Telecom: Targeted cloud integration for efficiency

TPG Telecom’s approach to cloud partnerships appears more pragmatic and operationally focused compared to its larger rivals. The company’s public collaborations are centred on leveraging specific cloud services to solve pressing post-merger integration challenges and to monetise its core network assets in a direct and efficient manner. This strategy is less about broad transformation narratives and more about targeted technical and commercial enablement.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

TPG’s primary public engagement with a hyperscaler is its “National AWS Connect” service, which productises its network for cloud-bound enterprises. This offering provides customers with a dedicated, private connection to AWS infrastructure in Australia, using TPG’s Ethernet services to bypass the public internet. The service is positioned as an economical and high-performance solution for businesses that need reliable, low-latency access to their AWS environments, including their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instances. This allows TPG to directly monetise its extensive network infrastructure by providing a value-added service that is critical for enterprise cloud adoption.

Internally, TPG Telecom also utilises the AWS platform for its own data and analytics needs. Following the complex merger of TPG and Vodafone, which brought together hundreds of disparate systems, the company architected a “knowledge lake” on AWS. This platform serves as a centralised, governed repository to consolidate data from both internal sources and external providers. It enables TPG to perform advanced analytics to optimise customer journeys, guide its 5G network investment strategy, and develop new enterprise services.

With Vocus’ acquisition of TPG’s enterprise business and fixed network, we expect these activities to be merged with Vocus’ existing Cloud Connect platform.

Google Cloud

TPG Telecom’s partnership with Google Cloud is highly specific and technical, focused on solving a critical enterprise architecture challenge: API management. To manage the immense complexity of an IT landscape comprising six major platforms and over 300 underlying systems post-merger, TPG selected Google Cloud’s Apigee platform as its strategic, enterprise-wide API management solution.

Apigee acts as a single, cloud-native gateway to expose, secure, and govern all of TPG’s APIs in a consistent manner. This approach decouples digital front-end systems from the complex back-end, allowing for faster development and a more agile response to business needs. The adoption of Apigee has delivered significant efficiency gains, reducing the time required to onboard new APIs to production from four weeks to just two. The platform’s Advanced API Security features also provide a single control plane for managing and monitoring security across hundreds of published APIs.

While no formal strategic partnership with Microsoft Azure is evident, TPG’s cloud offerings are designed to be compatible with Microsoft environments. TPG’s Private Cloud service is described as “Hypervisor Agnostic,” explicitly supporting Microsoft’s Hyper-V alongside VMWare. This allows enterprise customers who are heavily invested in the Microsoft stack to extend their existing virtualised environments into TPG’s private cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, the service is designed to accommodate customers reusing their existing Microsoft licenses from Enterprise Agreements. This indicates a practical approach to accommodating the reality of the enterprise market, where Microsoft workloads are prevalent, even without a top-level strategic alliance. This will ease the integration of TPG’s enterprise customer base into Vocus’ as Vocus digests its acquisition.

NBN Co: A Deep, Multi-Cloud Integration

As the foundational fixed wholesale telecommunications provider in Australia, Australia’s NBN Co is increasingly turning to strategic relationships with cloud service providers to enhance operations, drive innovation, and support national digital ambitions. 

NBN Co has actively embraced a multi-cloud strategy, integrating services from both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure into its core operations. This approach allows NBN Co to optimise costs, enhance capabilities, and avoid vendor lock-in.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The most significant and publicly detailed strategic relationship is with AWS. In a landmark move, NBN Co announced a partnership with Amazon’s Project Kuiper to deliver its next-generation satellite broadband services. This long-term collaboration will see NBN Co utilise Kuiper’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, marking a pivotal shift in how remote and rural Australia will connect to high-speed internet. Beyond this, NBN Co also utilises AWS for a significant portion of its internal IT workloads.

Microsoft Azure

NBN Co has also established a substantial relationship with Microsoft Azure. The company leverages Azure for a part of its IT infrastructure, running various business and operational systems on the platform. NBN Co’s interest in artificial intelligence and automation for its business processes, including mentions of tools like Microsoft Copilot, also points to a deepening collaboration with the Microsoft ecosystem.

Google Cloud

Information regarding a direct strategic partnership with Google Cloud is less prominent in public announcements. While NBN Co’s multi-cloud posture suggests they may utilise Google Cloud for specific workloads, the primary and most detailed strategic relationships appear to be with AWS and Microsoft Azure.

In summary, NBN Co has forged deep, publicly announced strategic relationships, particularly with AWS, for the delivery of core services, alongside a broader multi-cloud approach for its internal operations. 

New Zealand partnership analysis

The New Zealand telecommunications market, while smaller in scale than Australia’s, exhibits a similarly intense and strategic engagement with global cloud providers. The three major operators – Spark, One NZ, and 2degrees – have each forged significant alliances to modernise their operations, enhance their service offerings, and compete for leadership in the country’s digital transformation.

Spark New Zealand: Deep integration with premier partners

Spark New Zealand has strategically positioned itself as the nation’s leading multi-cloud expert by achieving the highest partnership tiers with both Microsoft and AWS. This dual-premier strategy is a powerful competitive differentiator, signaling to the market that Spark possesses the certified expertise and deep vendor relationships to manage complex, large-scale workloads on either of the top two cloud platforms, allowing it to serve as a credible and agnostic transformation partner for New Zealand’s largest enterprises and government agencies.

Microsoft Azure

In February 2025, Spark and Microsoft announced what they billed as “New Zealand’s largest-ever Microsoft public cloud partnership”. This landmark agreement is comprehensive, covering internal modernisation, joint go-to-market activities, and national skills development.

A key component of the partnership is Spark’s own digital transformation. The telco will move a significant proportion of its internal IT workloads to Microsoft Azure, modernising its hybrid cloud environment to improve efficiency and cloud economics. The deal also includes one of New Zealand’s largest deployments of Microsoft 365 Copilot, with 2,500 seats designated to embed generative AI across the business and enhance employee productivity.

The alliance establishes a framework for Spark and Microsoft to collaborate on hybrid cloud solutions for Spark’s business customers. A critical enabler for this is the recent launch of Microsoft’s NZ North cloud region in Auckland, which allows the partners to offer solutions with in-country data residency. The agreement includes a “New Zealand first” commitment to advanced data residency for Spark’s Microsoft 365 tenants, providing customers with the choice to keep their data onshore to meet regulatory and sovereignty requirements.

The partnership also extends to a national skilling initiative. The two companies will collaborate on a unified enablement program, supporting Microsoft’s broader commitment to train 100,000 New Zealanders in AI and digital skills over the next two years.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Spark’s relationship with AWS is equally deep and strategic. In July 2024, Spark Business Group announced that it had achieved AWS Premier Tier Partner status, the highest and most prestigious designation within the AWS Partner Network (APN). This status is reserved for the most experienced partners who have demonstrated deep technical expertise and proven success in delivering solutions to a large number of customers at scale.

This partnership is primarily driven by Spark’s specialist cloud business unit, CCL, which functions as the group’s “cloud centre of excellence”. With over 200 AWS certifications, CCL provides a full lifecycle of cloud services, from developing business cases and cloud strategies to executing digital transformation projects for major enterprise and public sector organisations across New Zealand.

The Spark Business Group’s offering is comprehensive, leveraging different parts of the organisation to deliver a full suite of AWS-related services. This includes advanced AI and data analytics from its Qrious unit, cloud contact centre solutions using Amazon Connect delivered by its Digital Island subsidiary, and secure, high-performance connectivity to AWS via Spark Cloud Connect WAN, which is an AWS Direct Connect Delivery validated service.

Google Cloud

While Spark does not have a deep strategic partnership with Google Cloud on the scale of its alliances with Microsoft and AWS, it does engage with Google at a commercial level. Spark acts as a reseller for Google Workspace, allowing its business customers to purchase the productivity suite and conveniently add the subscription to their monthly Spark bill through the Spark Cloud Marketplace. Google’s official partner directory for New Zealand lists several specialised local partners but does not include Spark at a premier or strategic level, indicating that this relationship is primarily a channel sales arrangement rather than a deep technical or GTM collaboration.

One New Zealand: A comprehensive cloud-first strategy

One New Zealand has embarked on an aggressive and wide-ranging cloud adoption journey, characterised by the speed and breadth of its initiatives. By signing major, distinct deals with all three hyperscalers within a concentrated period of roughly one year, One NZ is executing a rapid, multi-pronged strategy. This approach appears designed to simultaneously modernise its core IT infrastructure, innovate its customer-facing operations, and optimise its core network services, likely as part of a broader transformation following its rebranding from Vodafone.

Google Cloud

The most encompassing of its alliances is a five-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud, announced in September 2023, which underpins One NZ’s ambition to become a “cloud-first” organisation.

The partnership has two main pillars. The first is the internal modernisation of One NZ’s own infrastructure. The telco will leverage Google Cloud’s scalable and resilient platform to simplify its IT environment, streamline core operations, improve customer experiences, and optimise costs. A key aspect of this is enhancing its security posture by tapping into Google Cloud’s security solutions and the expertise of Mandiant Consulting.

The second pillar is a joint go-to-market strategy aimed at accelerating the digitisation of New Zealand businesses, particularly in the SMB segment. One NZ will work with Google Cloud to bring a suite of digital solutions – including data analytics, AI tools, and Google Workspace – to its customers. These will be offered as tailored SaaS solutions via One NZ’s cloud marketplace, designed to help Kiwi businesses scale and innovate more quickly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

One NZ’s partnership with AWS, highlighted in a November 2023 announcement, is sharply focused on applying advanced AI to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its customer service operations.

The company is using a suite of AWS AI services, most notably Amazon SageMaker and AWS Lambda, to power a generative AI solution for its contact centre. This system integrates with its existing Amazon Connect cloud contact centre platform, which is used by over 1,500 agents. The solution records, transcribes, and analyzes customer calls in near real-time, providing agents with data-driven insights and recommendations on how to best respond to inquiries. This initiative has already delivered tangible results, contributing to a 10% increase in customer trust and a 10% rise in customers reporting that they dealt with a knowledgeable representative.

Microsoft Azure

Announced in November 2022 while the company was still operating as Vodafone New Zealand, the partnership with Microsoft is centred on enhancing network performance and delivering modern workplace solutions.

One NZ became a Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS) partner, establishing multiple dedicated, direct links between its national network and Microsoft’s global network. This peering arrangement significantly improves the customer experience for those accessing Microsoft services by reducing latency, eliminating congestion, and providing highly available connectivity. This investment in network optimisation is particularly crucial for real-time applications like voice and video calling.

Building on this enhanced connectivity, One NZ, as a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work, offers Calling for Microsoft Teams with Operator Connect. This service deeply integrates One NZ’s voice network with the Teams platform, allowing businesses to use Teams as their primary phone system while benefiting from the quality and reliability of a carrier-grade network.

2degrees: Tactical cloud enablement

As the third-largest player in the New Zealand market, 2degrees has adopted a more tactical and capital-efficient cloud strategy. Instead of making massive upfront investments to build a large in-house cloud practice to rival its larger competitors, 2degrees has astutely leveraged the expertise of partners within the hyperscalers’ ecosystems. This ecosystem-led approach allows the company to bring cloud-enabled services to market quickly and compete effectively in targeted areas.

Microsoft Azure

The primary engagement of 2degrees with the Microsoft ecosystem is through a channel partnership model designed to serve the small and medium-sized business market. In April 2022, 2degrees announced a partnership with Microsoft and Umbrellar, a prominent local cloud solutions provider, to launch its “Cloud Navigator” service.

Cloud Navigator provides Kiwi businesses with a streamlined, self-service platform for purchasing and managing Microsoft licenses and products, such as Microsoft 365. The service simplifies the customer experience by offering a single account, a single bill, and a single platform, all backed by 2degrees’ customer support and underpinned by Umbrellar’s deep cloud expertise. This allows 2degrees to offer valuable cloud services to its business customers without needing to build the entire sales and support infrastructure from scratch. In addition to this service, 2degrees also provides direct network connectivity options for larger enterprises, offering both

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for private connections and Microsoft Azure Peering Service for optimised internet connectivity to Microsoft’s SaaS offerings.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The relationship between 2degrees and AWS is a clear example of its tactical, ecosystem-led strategy. Rather than a direct partnership with AWS, 2degrees leverages an AWS-native Software as a Service (SaaS) platform from a third-party vendor, Totogi, to enhance a specific line of business.

To expand its wholesale business and better serve the MVNO community, 2degrees adopted Totogi’s SaaS-based Charging-as-a-Service platform. Because Totogi’s solution is built natively on AWS, it provides the agility, scalability, and access to advanced AI services inherent to the public cloud. This partnership has had a dramatic operational impact, enabling 2degrees to accelerate the onboarding process for new MVNOs from a period of months down to just days. This allows 2degrees to compete more effectively in the wholesale market by offering a faster, more flexible platform, all powered by AWS infrastructure.

Google Cloud

No direct strategic partnerships between 2degrees and Google Cloud were identified in the available information. The company’s public-facing materials and Google’s partner directory do not indicate a formal relationship for the resale or management of Google Cloud Platform or Google Workspace services. The only tangential mention is a technical note that Google Chrome is a required browser for accessing the portal for their Cloud PBX service. This lack of a formal partnership suggests that 2degrees is currently focusing its cloud GTM efforts on the Microsoft and AWS ecosystems.

Chorus: A Neutral Platform for Cloud Investment

Chorus in New Zealand is guided by a “cloud-first” strategy, prioritising cloud-based solutions for new services and internal systems. Their approach appears to be focused on creating a robust, interconnected ecosystem that facilitates easy access to various cloud providers for their customers.

Chorus’ relationship with cloud providers has more dimensions than NBN Co’s because Chorus has a more diverse set of assets to bring to the table. A key pillar of Chorus’s cloud strategy is its EdgeCentre data centres. These smaller, strategically located data centres are situated at the edge of the Chorus fibre network. They are designed to provide low-latency co-location services, which are highly attractive to cloud providers and enterprises needing to be closer to their end-users. This infrastructure-led approach positions Chorus as a critical enabler for cloud services in New Zealand, facilitating high-speed, reliable access to the major cloud platforms.

While the “cloud-first” strategy is clear, specific, large-scale strategic partnerships with Google, AWS, or Azure, similar to NBN Co’s Project Kuiper announcement, have not been as publicly detailed for Chorus. It is understood that Chorus works closely with all major cloud providers to ensure seamless connectivity for their respective customers through the extensive Chorus fibre network. Their focus appears to be on providing the foundational connectivity and infrastructure that enables a broad range of cloud services to thrive in New Zealand, rather than deep, exclusive integrations with a single provider.

In summary, Chorus is executing a “cloud-first” strategy with a strong focus on enabling widespread cloud access through its investment in network-edge data centres, positioning itself as a neutral and essential partner to the entire cloud ecosystem in New Zealand.

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