A new report by the Small Cell Forum predicts that by 2025 almost 75 percent of new indoor small cell deployments will be colocated with mobile edge computing facilities or private enterprise cell networks that interconnect with public mobile networks.
The private networks will include a mix of neutral host facilities and enterprise private networks.
Edge computing solutions are seen as network-based, where the service provider deploys edge computing assets, or premises-based, where an enterprise or venue owner deploys edge computing assets as part of its IT infrastructure.
SCF logically argues that small and medium-sized organizations might not be able to financially justify a private edge computing capability, and would be “better served by a network-based edge solution.”
“Edge compute is one of the most important developments for mobile operators (MNOs) and other service providers to consider in their next generation network strategies,” the report argues. “There are significant opportunities to harness edge compute and combine localized data center (processing, storage and analytics) capabilities with connectivity.”
But the report also makes clear that “both enterprise customers and mobile network operators may deploy small cell networks as well as edge computing platforms together.” In other words, it is unclear how small cell edge computing will develop. In some cases mobile or other service providers might provide the edge computing. In other cases enterprises will do so themselves.
Revenue opportunities thus develop for infrastructure providers and service providers. As has been true in other similar situations, opportunities for infrastructure providers and managed service providers are distinct and non-overlapping.
In principle, a connectivity provider can provide colocation (data center racks, power, cooling, security), network-related functions, an edge computing platform for third party tenants, hosted applications or fully managed computing services. Risk, expense and revenue upside vary by the choices made.
Keep in mind that for a firm such Amazon Web Services, infrastructure as a service means computing cycles on demand. For a mobile operator, infrastructure might mean the data center rack space functions.
A big strategic issue for mobile operators is how much of the actual computing function can be supplied on a sustainable basis. Will some customers primarily want rack space? Yes. Beyond that, might some customers want to buy mobile operator computing, storage, platform or app offers? That is much less clear.
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