Lumen and Cloud Giants Have “Co-opetition” to Reshape Internet Architecture

At the recent Google Cloud Next conference, an unexpected name was repeatedly mentioned – Lumen, a US telecommunications operator. The company is promoting the comprehensive upgrade of Internet infrastructure in the United States through strategic cooperation with cloud service giants such as Google Cloud.

Reconstruct the Internet infrastructure

Dave Ward, chief technology officer of Lumen, revealed to Fierce that the new 400G cloud access point built by the company in cooperation with Google Cloud will gradually replace the old Internet infrastructure. These distributed high-speed nodes can connect to both existing Google data centers and planned new facilities.

Ward proposed to restructure the US Internet architecture as early as May 2024. He believes that existing facilities treat cloud traffic as a ‘second-class citizen’, while the new architecture will achieve multi cloud access through virtualized network exchange, rather than traditional data center point-to-point connections.

Breakthrough technology solutions

Unlike traditional single cloud access solutions, Lumen’s port design allows enterprises to horizontally access multiple cloud platforms:

-Reduce physical port requirements by over 50%

-Reduce the number of cross connections by two digit percentages

-Significantly reduce the cost and complexity of multi cloud deployment

“We are building new high-speed access points across the United States, “Ward said.” This is not only a bandwidth upgrade, but also a reduction in access friction driven by APIs. Currently, Lumen has become the first user of this architecture.”

The AI wave accelerates transformation

Although the plan was originally expected to take several years to advance, the explosive demand for AI computing power has accelerated the process. In addition to Google Cloud, Lumen is also in talks for cooperation with other cloud service providers such as Microsoft and professional clouds (storage, SaaS, etc.).

“It may sound arrogant, but rebuilding the Internet architecture is the only way to build a modern enterprise,” Ward stressed, “the expansion speed of cloud services depends on the ability of customers to obtain high bandwidth.”

New paradigm of competition and cooperation relationship

Industry analysis firm AvidThink founder Roy Chua pointed out that this kind of cooperation is essentially “coopetition”: cloud giants lack access network resources, while Lumen needs global level partners. Muninder Sambi, Vice President of Network Products at Google Cloud, has reached a consensus with Ward that relying on existing third-party neutral facilities cannot meet the 400G connectivity requirements of AI applications.

It is worth noting that Microsoft launched Azure Virtual WAN based on its backbone network in 2018, and AWS also released the same named service in 2021. But analysts believe that Google may gain a latecomer advantage with the help of AI.

According to Ward’s suggestion, Lumen’s collaboration with other “competing partners” is also in preparation. This AI driven Internet architecture revolution is accelerating through the unique mode of competition and cooperation between operators and cloud service providers.