Liberty Latin America Builds a Global Infrastructure for Millions of Subscribers Using AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts

Connectivity services provider Liberty Latin America (LLA) has been rapidly expanding into new marketplaces through organic growth and strategic acquisitions. In November 2020, LLA finalized an acquisition that resulted in it gaining mobile subscribers based in Puerto Rico. To continue delivering low-latency and high-durability telephony, broadband, and mobile services to its subscribers, LLA wanted to implement a new cloud-native business support system (BSS) that it could use for core business functions such as account management, customer management, billing, and more.

Connecting LLA’s legacy on-premises data centers to the cloud while maintaining data sovereignty to comply with local regulations was central to designing a cloud-first BSS. To meet these goals, LLA adopted AWS Outposts, a family of fully managed solutions that lets companies run AWS infrastructure and services on premises for a consistent hybrid experience. With an eye toward innovation, the LLA team also automated its failover plan in the cloud with AWS Local Zones, giving it the ability to run latency-sensitive applications closer to end users. With its cloud-native architecture, LLA can deliver consistent, reliable service to its customers with 99.999 percent availability.

Established from a corporate split-off in January 2018, LLA has a rich history of delivering communications and entertainment services to businesses and consumers globally. Its goal is to provide bundled video, internet, and telephone subscriptions across the Caribbean and Latin America. On an annual basis, the company generates around 4.5 billion dollars in revenue and serves more than 40 unique marketplaces.

Upon completing a large-scale acquisition in 2020, LLA faced the complex task of building a resilient, robust infrastructure that could support an expansion into Puerto Rico. “We had to build the systems from scratch,” says Joaquin Cameselle, senior manager of cloud services at LLA. “We don’t have any major data centers in Puerto Rico. We were looking for a solution that would deliver high performance and scalability, and which would also give us the ability to deploy our resources at the edge.”

Upon completing a large-scale acquisition in 2020, LLA faced the complex task of building a resilient, robust infrastructure that could support an expansion into Puerto Rico. “We had to build the systems from scratch,” says Joaquin Cameselle, senior manager of cloud services at LLA. “We don’t have any major data centers in Puerto Rico. We were looking for a solution that would deliver high performance and scalability, and which would also give us the ability to deploy our resources at the edge.”
 

LLA went all in on AWS, and its teams began working to stand up an outpost in Puerto Rico using AWS Outposts. To support its roughly 1 million mobile subscribers, LLA set up a network that runs in parallel with the existing infrastructure. LLA’s teams then started migrating its subscribers’ voicemails, SIM cards, and other important data to its network. “As soon as management said go, we were working in the cloud on AWS,” says Cameselle. “This project was happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, so there were all sorts of delays with hardware and logistics.By using AWS, we saved at least 6–8 months in time to market.”

While LLA was running its BSS application in AWS Outposts as the primary environment, the team required a second environment for the same application to virtually ensure disaster recovery and resilience. With the nearest AWS Region in Virginia (US East N. Virginia), LLA needed infrastructure closer to Puerto Rico to meet its latency requirement. LLA set up a separate environment in the AWS Local Zone in Miami so that it can continuously replicate the data stored in its BSS and automatically fail over any time its latency falls below 50 ms. “Puerto Rico recently went through a major hurricane,” says Cameselle. “The island lost a lot of local systems, but we never lost connectivity to the internet.Our antennas are up, and our BSS has full capacity and reliability.”

By failing over to the AWS Local Zone in Miami from its outpost in Puerto Rico, LLA has maintained 99.999 percent availability, and its subscribers can access their digital accounts and billing information at an average latency of 20 ms. The company has also minimized its overhead by paying only for the compute that it uses. “We realized that migrating our subscribers wouldn’t have been possible if we had tried to stand up our own hardware and software onsite,” says Cameselle. “Not only have we been able to go to market, but we have reduced our capital expenditure by using AWS.”

LLA has a goal to finish migrating the rest of its subscribers to its network by the spring of 2024. All the while, its teams have peace of mind knowing that they can provide reliable, consistent service to their customers. “A connectivity company makes its money by offering uninterrupted service to its customers,” says Cameselle.

The company will also continue supporting its heavy growth mode by scaling its global infrastructure in the cloud. “Now we understand what we can do,” says Cameselle. “We can use this same design and the lessons we learned on other acquisitions and projects, which is going to translate to more cost savings, lower time to market, and even better service for our customers.”

Liberty Latin America is a leading communications company operating in over 20 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean under the consumer brands BTC, Flow, Liberty, and Más Móvil and through ClaroVTR, its joint venture in Chile.