The edge is getting crowded, and mobile operators, cloud providers and enterprises are staking a position to determine who will benefit from edge computing and capture revenues from new services. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, AT&T have already announced major edge strategies that include infrastructure for mobile edge computing that will complement or compete with operators for new low-latency 5G services.

IDC has estimated that by 2023, more than half of all worldwide GDP is predicted to be driven by products and services from digitally transformed industries. For organizations to stay competitive in this digital-first economy, services must be able to run anywhere and anytime – that is, become a “digital first” company. To that end, more than half of all new enterprise infrastructure will be deployed at the edge, instead of in traditional, centralized data centers.

What is Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) for 5G?

Mobile edge compute or multi-access edge computing (MEC) is part of that macro digital transformation and edge compute technology that will extend the digital reach of enterprise, cloud and service providers.

The evolution of the acronym MEC reflects the integration of mobile with edge technologies. Originally it was “mobile edge compute” as defined by ETSI and then it became “multi-access edge compute,” as it became clear that fixed as well as mobile access could be included. Now MEC often means mobile edge cloud and implies a new ecosystem that merges cloud and 5G mobile infrastructure and the corresponding industries.

So when mobile operators are planning and deploying their 5G networks and transforming their existing 4G /3G networks, they must consider not only how they can best meet the higher expectations of their subscribers, new devices, and new applications, but also how they can best participate in a new ecosystem that includes large cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft who are also competing for the same enterprise revenue.

Mobile operators already have a number of technology transformations to manage, 4G to 5G, hardware to software, IPv4 to IPv6 migration, including MEC. Their business success depends upon their ability to successfully navigate all the technology changes to provide a seamless subscriber experience and to provide value to those enterprise creating new applications and services.

Here are some important considerations and challenges facing mobile network operators as they begin to deploy 5G and MEC nodes.

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Defining the “Edge” for mobile network operators

The primary value of mobile edge compute is the reduction in latency for subscriber services, but the definition of “edge” can include a few dozen aggregation points or thousands of cell site, depending upon the operator strategy.

The more distribution points, the closer to the user and therefore the lower the latency that can be derived.

5G services such as telemedicine and connected cars require very low latency levels that can only be reached when network traffic processing functions are moved very closer to the user.

Functions deployed in multi-access edge compute nodes

Operators have many decisions to make for MEC, including how far to the edge to deploy, how many nodes, which functions to move to those nodes and what form factors they should use for those functions – physical appliances, VMs or containers.

Space and power constraints

While moving mobile processing functions to distributed data centers does provide low-latency benefits, MEC nodes are often power and space constrained. In the Gi-LAN portion of the core network, this can be especially challenging.

ETSI has defined deployment scenarios for 4G, 5G NSA and 5G SA MEC environments, including analysis of the functions provided in the MEC platform itself. However, in addition to those core network functions, there are a number of functions that operators ...