How Much Demand for Infrastructure Edge Computing?

Stadia, Google's low-latency cloud gaming platform, based on Google’s own private network, data centers and edge caching, illustrates both the opportunity and threat to connectivity provider revenues.

One of the promises of virtualized core networks, network slicing and edge computing is the ability to create customized private networks with latency guarantees. Stadia will do so without using any carrier features purchased to support the Stadia network.

source: Korea Telecom, Lightreading

That suggests a few big app providers might not be customers for telco edge computing or network slicing services. To be sure, most consumer apps will benefit from 5G latency performance, even when using best-effort internet access.

But as content delivery networks are a business, so might edge computing be a business. The issue, as always, is which apps benefit from edge computing, and which firms, in which parts of the ecosystem, will grab that business.

In other words, the “dumb pipe” role now will be raised in yet another part of the communications service business.