Videos
AWS on AI-Powered Modernization for Telecom
Insights
- Agentic AI can significantly reduce the time, cost, and risk associated with modernizing legacy OSS and BSS platforms.
- AI-powered reverse engineering helps organizations generate documentation and uncover business logic from poorly documented systems.
- Successful modernization requires an end-to-end approach spanning analysis, transformation, migration, and cloud operations.
At MWC 2026, Visu Sontam of AWS discusses how AI is changing the economics of telecom modernization. He explains that many operators remain dependent on legacy OSS and BSS systems because transformation projects are often viewed as expensive, complex, and high risk. The conversation explores how agentic AI can automate analysis and reverse engineering, helping organizations generate documentation, understand business logic, and accelerate modernization efforts. Sontam outlines a four-phase modernization journey that includes assessment, application transformation, cloud migration, and ongoing operations, highlighting how AWS capabilities and the Infosys Frontier Telco framework can support each stage. Looking ahead, he argues that AI-driven modernization will help telecom operators reduce technical debt, increase innovation velocity, and move more confidently toward cloud-native architectures.
Christine Calhoun:
Tell me about how you're working to reduce operational cost, reduce the risk of modernization?
Visu Sontam:
Most of the telco operators are still stuck in legacy OSS, BSS applications and they are skeptical of undertaking any large transformation projects. One, due to not being sure how long it is going to take, based on previous experience, it takes years, and the complexity, the business logic. And as of now the operational cost is increasing of hosting these applications and the innovation velocity has reduced.
Visu Sontam:
Most of the telco operators are still stuck in legacy OSS, BSS applications and they are skeptical of undertaking any large transformation projects. One, due to not being sure how long it is going to take, based on previous experience, it takes years, and the complexity, the business logic. And as of now the operational cost is increasing of hosting these applications and the innovation velocity has reduced.
Visu Sontam:
So to modernize these applications, the AWS agentic AI capabilities can help organizations to de-risk this, and whatever modernization used to take years can be done in months.
Christine Calhoun:
This used to take a long time and cost a lot of money is what you're saying. And now with the help of the Infosys Frontier Telco model, it is faster.
Visu Sontam:
Whatever used to take almost three years can be done in maybe 25 weeks.
Christine Calhoun:
Many times telcos don't have the proper documentation. How do you suggest that they fix this?
Visu Sontam:
Most of the times when we start modernization, they'll say, hey, I have a system which is running very good, but I'm skeptical, I don't have expertise, I have no documentation. How do we do? In the demo which we are showcasing here, we are showcasing a transform custom which can take from any model, any language to any model. Once you point it to your source code, it can do all the analysis. It will generate the documentation, it will generate what is the existing business logic. This is what we call reverse engineering.
Visu Sontam:
So as a whole, modernization generally happens in four phases. First is the analysis phase where reverse engineering happens. Second phase is modernization, where you go from legacy to a newer version, cloud native, API first, purpose built databases. Third is migration to AWS. Also, operations once you are in the cloud. And this is where the whole Infosys expertise comes into picture, as being the backbone and being the consultant, and the Infosys Telco Frontier model will help you in all four phases.
