MobiledgeX touts public mobile edge network with Deutsche Telekom
by Monica Alleven |
MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 is powering the public mobile edge network deployment with Deutsche Telekom in Germany. (Deutsche Telekom)
Just in time for Mobile World Congress 2019, MobiledgeX is announcing several milestones, including the completion of what it describes as the first public mobile edge network deployment—with Deutsche Telekom in Germany—and the introduction of MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0, which is already in the hands of developers.
The MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 solution connects mobile users to application cloud containers created by aggregating existing operator network resources. These containers execute close to end devices, meeting the performance requirements of next-generation mobile innovations, all of which, of course, leads up to 5G.
And even though MobiledgeX is closely tied to Deutsche Telekom, it works with mobile operators worldwide and it considers them to be its business partners.
"Everyone is excited about edge," but not many people are building the ecosystem for the operators, said MobiledgeX CTO Sunay Tripathi. MobiledgeX is considered a trusted entity for operators, and it's actually building a lot of the necessary technology pieces that help people run in an edge cloud environment, he told FierceWirelessTech.
In fact, cellular infrastructure is rapidly becoming a critical part of cloud computing, and few people understand how different the cellular infrastructure is from wired internet infrastructure, according to Tripathi.
"As those differences become better understood, the value of having cloud resources in the cellular edge will become clearer," he wrote in a blog post. "To begin with, use of the cellular infrastructure solves some of the fundamental problems with the existing Internet—you know a lot about a cellular user (they have a contractual relationship with an operator), you know a lot about where they are independently of where a smartphone thinks it is using radio location data that can't be spoofed. And compared to the Internet, the cellular infrastructure is much more secure and private (there are no third parties lurking and looking at your traffic)."
He also said that using cellular infrastructure provides a straightforward way of building out an edge cloud. That's because mobile operators "have lots of compute near the edge and are used to resource sharing and compensation (that's how telephony roaming works)," he wrote. "A successful edge has to be global and multi-tenant (public). It's not at all clear how you do that with the wired Internet because those network service providers don't necessarily do a lot of computing or have hosting business models."
MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 is now in general availability globally and already supporting the prototyping of developer use cases in public networks. Niantic, creator of the Pokémon Go game, has been working with MobiledgeX to develop technology that bridges the physical and digital worlds to create new entertainment experiences. To achieve its goals, it needed a low-latency network and high bandwidth to enable a large number of players to share AR experiences. That's where MobledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 comes in.
MobiledgeX will have several demonstrations at Mobile World Congress—actually, they're more than demos because they're using actual infrastructure and software, Tripathi said. At the Deutsche Telekom booth in Hall 3, MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud R1.0 will be powering one of the latest edge use cases.
5G edge computing NFV MobiledgeX Deutsche Telekom
Monica Alleven
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