Hyperscalers’ retreat from the private networks market reflects its slow progress, but not its failure

Amazon (AWS) revealed, on 20 May 2025, that it had withdrawn support for its AWS Private 5G service. This follows Microsoft’s quiet disclosure of the retirement of its Azure Private 5G Core solution, due in September 2025. Both players will continue to be active in the private networks space, but will play a secondary role to operators and other partners.

The hyperscalers’ retreat from the private networks space reflects the slower-than-expected development of the market. We have previously discussed the competing visions for how private networks will evolve and that it was unlikely for many of these visions to persist. AWS and Microsoft appear to have concluded that the market will not be large enough to support their vision of private networks being an extension of the public cloud, or that it will take too long to get there (among other reasons).