A difference between telcos and IaaS is IT is 'baked into' AWS. AWS's IT team (people, software, automation) silently becomes an extension of your team. It mak

A difference between telcos and IaaS is IT is 'baked into' AWS. AWS's IT team (people, software, automation) silently becomes an extension of your team. It makes AWS more than a dumb pipe, and makes it difficult to leave AWS (generally you have to be very purposeful to avoid this lock-in). Interestingly, considering the OP's comparison, many enterprises are also tethered to AWS via telco dumb pipes (e.g. App user -> WAN -> Private DC -> Colo facility -> Direct Connect (MPLS) -> app in VPC).