Who Owns the Edge, Where is the Revenue?

Who will own the edge, and who will pay? Those are the two key questions for mobile or fixed network operators looking for a role in the edge computing ecosystem. So far, despite the rhetoric, most tier-one telcos with edge computing aspirations still are focusing on connectivity revenues or real estate (colocation in telco facilities, for example). 

AT&T is working with Microsoft to create edge locations supporting customers of  Microsoft Azure cloud services and AT&T’s 5G network. AT&T’s upside seems to be colo revenue and incremental connectivity business. 

BT seems to be positioning for access revenues for retail customers, though it might also expect to use edge compute locations to support its own 5G and other services using a more  virtualized network.

Indeed, it is quite possible that the earliest value of edge computing for many tier-one service providers will be as a support for its own operations. 

BT definitely is increasing the number of its metro exchanges to reduce latency, but its description of “edge” is “managed LAN, WLAN and wireless” solutions. That seems more a case of traditional services being recast as “edge” revenue. 

BT says it offers “a fully managed service that securely connects corporate end-users to voice, data and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is not what many of us would consider “edge computing.”

CenturyLink seems to be generating connectivity revenue at the moment, though some might question the characterization of much of that revenue as “edge” related. 

Telefonica’s “open architecture” likewise seems aimed at internal uses, though external customers will be able to take advantage of the architecture as well. Telefónica says its edge computing platform will enable a “wide community of developers (including Telefónica’s own).”

Telefónica could “deploy a huge range of basebands and radios from different vendors, enabling multi vendor interoperability.”

Telefónica “will benefit from native RAN virtualization, modularity and virtualization.”

Verizon has a partnership with Amazon Web Services offering the “Wavelength” program that collocates AWS computing resources inside Verizon facilities. 

So far, aside from support for virtualized network operations on an internal basis, the two incremental revenue streams seem to be connectivity and collocation. That could change, over time. But right now, infrastructure edge arguably is more a support for core telco operations than a major driver of incremental revenue.