Telco Transformation 2026: Sovereignty and Geopatriation

The transformation from a traditional telecommunications provider (Telco) into a technology-driven company (Techco) remains a strategic imperative for the industry. However, the path forward has become significantly more complex. While Gartner predicts that by 2025 around 95% of all digital workloads will run on cloud-native platforms, a powerful counter-trend is taking shape for 2026: geopatriation.

Gartner defines geopatriation as the strategic relocation of data and applications from global public clouds back into sovereign cloud environments or on-premise data centers, driven by geopolitical risk and regulatory uncertainty. According to forecasts, more than 75% of European enterprises will have repatriated workloads by 2030.

For decision-makers attending MWC, this means cloud strategy can no longer be framed in binary terms (“public vs. private”). What is required instead is differentiated orchestration. At Tallence, we see four strategic domains in which AWS - now not only as a global hyperscaler but also through the European Sovereign Cloud - can act as an enabler of true data sovereignty.

For a long time, the full migration of the 5G core into the global public cloud - as demonstrated by O2 Telefónica - was considered the ultimate target architecture. In practice, however, physical constraints (latency) and economic factors (egress costs) mean this will not be the standard model for many communication service providers (CSPs).

Rather than blindly shifting the entire core network into centralized cloud regions, the strategic value lies in distributed architectures. With services such as AWS Outposts and AWS Wavelength, AWS enables cloud capabilities to be deployed directly within a telco’s own data centers or at the network edge.

The key benefit: Telcos retain local data processing for latency-critical applications - such as autonomous robotics or AR/VR - while continuing to use standardized cloud APIs and development tools. This preserves data sovereignty and mitigates infrastructure-level vendor lock-in, while still capturing the speed and agility of cloud-native development.

One long-standing concern regarding US hyperscalers has been the risk of extraterritorial access - most notably under the US CLOUD Act - which could not be fully eliminated even with certifications such as BSI C5.

The launch of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) in Brandenburg marks a turning point for 2026. Unlike regional availability zones, the ESC is a physically and logically isolated cloud partition. This fundamentally changes the rules of the game:

For telcos, this means that highly regulated and geopatriation-critical workloads can now run on AWS technology without compromising digital sovereignty.

While infrastructure debates are often highly technical, real value creation increasingly takes place at the customer interface. This is where experienced transformation partners make a tangible difference: in the modernization of Business Support Systems (BSS) and Customer Experience (CX).

Telcos possess vast volumes of data that are frequently trapped in monolithic silos. Leveraging services such as Amazon Bedrock allows this data to be activated for personalized customer experiences - from AI-driven chatbots to predictive maintenance.

Our recommendation as an AWS partner is a hybrid data strategy: sensitive customer data remains within the sovereign ESC or dedicated on-premise enclaves, while anonymized data models benefit from the innovation power of global AWS AI services. This enables telcos to launch new digital services in days rather than months - without introducing compliance risks.

A common criticism of cloud platforms is the risk of proprietary lock-in. Tools such as the AWS Telco Network Builder (TNB) deliver significant efficiency gains through automation based on ETSI standards (SOL003/SOL005). However, the underlying orchestration layers often remain AWS-specific.

The strategic response lies in strict adherence to the Open Digital Architecture (ODA). By modularizing IT landscapes and relying on open APIs, telcos preserve the flexibility to replace individual components over time.

Our recommendation: Use AWS TNB to accelerate deployments, but insist on a container-based architecture - such as Amazon EKS - that remains portable by design. With the availability of the ESC, these container workloads can now be seamlessly migrated into a sovereign environment should geopolitical conditions further deteriorate.

Standardization should not become a golden cage, but rather a toolkit for interoperability.

MWC 2026 will make one thing clear: the future does not belong to those who migrate everything indiscriminately into the global public cloud. It belongs to organizations that strike an intelligent balance - between the scalability of global cloud platforms and the security of sovereign cloud environments such as the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

At Tallence, we see ourselves as navigators in this differentiated landscape. We help you precisely classify your workloads: which belong in the global innovation engine, which must move into sovereign cloud environments due to geopatriation requirements, and which should remain on-premise.

Let’s discuss in Barcelona how to shape your digital transformation pragmatically, securely, and sovereignly.