Who Will Own the Edge?

“Who owns the edge?” is a very good question for all would-be participants to be asking. So far, a few general categories of use cases seem universally cited by standards groups, service providers and would-be infrastructure or service suppliers, all playing to the new capabilities of 5G networks. The 3GPP framework is built on capacity (“enhanced mobile broadband”), massive internet of things and ultra-reliable low-latency communications. 

Everyone will notice that the value proposition is all about ultra-low latency and capacity, for business-to-business and consumer apps. According to Vertiv, that means use cases including security, smart grids, smarter retail, augmented reality and haptic computing, virtual reality,  smart cities and life-critical use cases. 

source: Vertiv

Virtually nobody would disagree that all those use cases are conceivable uses for networks and computing architectures with so-far unparalleled latency performance. 

But that also means the edge looms large because ultra-low latency, while fine for the access connection, does not offer as much value if compute functions do not match the access latency. 

Roles and revenue opportunities are the issues for connectivity providers. Presumably there are connectivity account opportunities, in the form of new mobile or fixed connections, higher customer spending on capacity or colocation for partners who want to put edge computing facilities into place. 

Less certain are opportunities in the actual edge “computing as a service” part of the business. . 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). 

That does not mean other opportunities will fail to develop, perhaps in the way that Verizon acquired Bluejeans, the videoconferencing service. There is ample precedent for telcos acquiring apps, content services, media platforms, connected car and other “services” that rely on communication networks. 

Still, we remain in early days.