The Challenge: Balancing Cost and Capacity
Traditional mobile network deployments face a difficult trade-off: over-provision expensive local hardware to handle occasional peak traffic, or risk service degradation during busy hours. This legacy approach leads to high fixed costs and significantly underutilized resources for most of the day.
Operators end up paying for capacity they only need a fraction of the time – an inefficiency that directly impacts the bottom line, especially as voice and data traffic patterns become more volatile and unpredictable.
The Solution: Dynamic Cloud Bursting
Modern operators can now leverage a hybrid cloud bursting strategy: run baseline traffic on cost-efficient, on-premises bare-metal servers while seamlessly scaling into the public cloud – AWS, GCP, or Hetzner – only when demand spikes.
This “best of both worlds” strategy delivers tangible benefits across the entire operational lifecycle:
Lowest Fixed Costs
Baseline traffic is handled by on-premise hardware, keeping daily operational expenses predictable and low.
Real-Time Scalability
The platform monitors media plane utilization in real time. As traffic nears the bare-metal capacity limit, additional RTPEngine nodes spin up automatically in the public cloud.
Automated Cost Control
Once peak traffic subsides, cloud resources are terminated automatically – stopping the cost clock immediately. You only pay for what you use.
Vendor Independence
A cloud-agnostic approach means workloads can be moved between providers without changing a single line of code or configuration.
Proven in the Field: A German MVNO Success Story
This hybrid architecture is not theoretical. We have successfully deployed it for a German MVNO that needed to deliver carrier-grade voice quality without the budget for peak-provisioned bare-metal infrastructure.
By utilizing bare-metal servers for standard operations and bursting into the public cloud during busy hours, the operator achieved:
- Significant TCO reduction compared to a fully on-premise deployment sized for peak capacity
- Zero service degradation during traffic spikes – additional cloud nodes are ready within minutes
- Full IMS Core for VoLTE and ePDG for VoWiFi, proving that mission-critical voice services can thrive in a hybrid environment
- Operational simplicity through fully automated scaling decisions – no manual intervention required
80% Hosting Cost Reduction
Our lightweight, Kubernetes-native containers can achieve an estimated 80% reduction in hosting costs compared to traditional virtualized network functions. Combined with hybrid cloud bursting, operators gain both financial and operational flexibility.
How It Works Under the Hood
The system continuously monitors real-time traffic levels across all media plane components. When utilization on the bare-metal cluster approaches a configurable threshold (e.g., 90%), the orchestration layer triggers automatic up-scaling:
- Traffic monitoring: Real-time metrics track RTPEngine session counts and CPU utilization on bare-metal nodes
- Threshold detection: When capacity nears the defined limit, the system signals the cloud orchestrator
- Cloud provisioning: New RTPEngine nodes are spun up in AWS, GCP, or Hetzner within minutes
- Load redistribution: New sessions are automatically routed to the freshly provisioned cloud nodes
- Automatic teardown: As traffic normalizes, cloud instances are terminated to stop incurring costs
The entire cycle is fully automated. Operators set their policies once and the platform handles the rest – 24/7, without human intervention.
Meet volte.io at MWC 2026 in Barcelona
The Mobile World Congress is the most important event for our industry to discuss these shifts in infrastructure strategy. We will be on the ground in Barcelona from March 2nd to 5th, 2026, ready to share insights and discuss your specific challenges.
If you are interested in exploring any of the following topics, let's schedule a meeting:
- Cloud Bursting & Hybrid Architectures – reduce costs while scaling for peak demand
- IMS, VoLTE, and VoWiFi as-a-Service – carrier-grade voice without the infrastructure burden
- Kubernetes-native network automation – deploy and operate core network functions at cloud speed
Whether you want to deep-dive into IMS technicalities or explore cost-saving strategies for your core network, our experts are ready to talk. Contact us today to schedule a meeting in Barcelona. We look forward to seeing you there.