China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, Orange, Singtel, SK Telecom, Telefonica and TIM have joined forces, with the support of the GSMA, to develop a multi-access edge computing platform that is interoperable.
The platform, to be developed in 2020, will make local operator assets and capabilities, such as latency, compute and storage available to application developers and software vendors enabling them to fulfil the needs of enterprise clients.
There are other interoperability efforts also underway, including 3GPP efforts, in addition to work by ETSI.
In the end, standards are not a business model, but an enabler of business models. Some note that the edge is a possible business battleground, as many in the ecosystem hope to capitalize on the opportunity as providers of computing as a service, computing platform as a service or colocation.
Hyperscale cloud computing firms now are moving into the incipient business at the same time 5G suppliers hope to secure a position. But tower owners and some retailers might also expect they have a role as well.
In the past, connectivity providers have often failed to compete with cloud computing suppliers or with independent data center providers, either. Verizon and AT&T. for example, already seem to be taking different roles in an effort to monetize existing assets for edge computing.
Colocation and connections might be the role telcos eventually are forced to assume, their aspirations notwithstanding. Interoperability will be important for connectivity providers as they seek to serve global enterprises, allowing a single “throat to choke” offer for facilities scattered around the globe.
At least so far, though, such capabilities seem more advanced at the level of colocation and hosting than actual computing as a service, at least in part because the current standards mostly apply to the ways different telcos operate their networks to support edge computing.
The ETSI GS MEC 003 addresses the implementation of MEC applications as software-only entities that run on top of a virtualization infrastructure, which is located in or close to the network edge. A key new aspect of the Phase 2 version of this specification is the addition of MEC-in-NFV reference architecture, which defined how MEC-compliant edge deployments can be part of an overall NFV cloud architecture.
ETSI aims for a unified edge compute architectural framework and reference platform, to be deployed across multiple markets in Europe and progressively extended to other operators and geographies to achieve global reach, ETSI says.
The Framework and Reference Architecture standard includes the functional elements, the reference points between them, and a number of MEC services. In the updated version from 2019, a MEC variant was described with network functions virtualization (NFV) functional elements.
The Technical Requirements specification covers generic principles of MEC, such as NFV alignment and deployment independence. The 2018 update, Use Cases and Requirements, added application mobility to and from an external system, as well as 13 additional possible MEC use cases.
In 2019, the MEC ISG added 16 terms to the Terminology paper, including those often used in the ETSI MEC standards.
Mobile Edge Management has a two-part standard. The first, on system, host and platform management, defines the management protocol of the mobile edge system, hosts, and platforms.
The second, on application lifecycle, rules, and requirements, outlines the application lifecycle management protocol in this standard. The document lists the rules and management requirements.
The User Equipment (UE) application interface standard details how to manage the application’s lifecycle on the connected device’s application interface.
The Bandwidth Management API standard primarily deals with bandwidth concerns when multiple devices use the same edge network. It focuses on application policy information, and how to address certain application program interface (API) scenarios that affect bandwidth usage and the network edge.
ETSI’s standard for the UE Identity API mainly focuses on a way to tag and track the user’s equipment in the network to enforce traffic rules. The standard for the Location API establishes guidelines for detecting the user’s device location information on the edge network.
In order to have a uniform Radio Network Information Service (RNIS) in MEC deployments, ETSI made the Radio Network Information API. It informs edge applications of the radio network’s condition to optimize network usage.
The Mobile Edge Platform Application Enablement document focuses on how the mobile platform functionality one (Mp1) reference point enables applications to communicate with the mobile edge system.
The General Principles for MEC Service APIs standard is a glossary of the RESTful API mobile edge service’s design principles, and highlights API guidelines and templates. In the 2019 update more RESTful API patterns were included.
The Support for Regulatory Requirements standard describes infrastructure to allow for Lawful Interception and Retained Data when implementing MEC into a larger network. This standard gives full support to these two practices’ regulatory requirements.
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