Telecom operators collaborate to build the telco edge cloud platform

Leading operators, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, Orange, Singtel, SK Telecom, Telefonica, and TIM have joined forces, with the support of the GSMA, to develop an interoperable platform to make edge-compute capabilities widely and easily available.

The platform to be developed in 2020 will make local operator assets and capabilities, such as latency, compute, and storage available to application developers and software vendors, enabling them to fulfil the needs of enterprise clients.

Operators have agreed to work together to develop an edge-compute architectural framework and reference platform, and the GSMA has launched an Operator Platform Project to support this exciting operator initiative. Initially, the platform will be deployed across multiple markets in Europe, and progressively extended to other operators and geographies to achieve global reach.

Operators can offer enterprises unmatched proximity to their customers and deliver high performance. For enterprises, these capabilities create an opportunity for expansion to local or international markets, whilst maintaining compliance with local regulatory and data protection laws.

Telco edge cloud will be open and inclusive, provide data protection and sovereignty mechanisms, offer carrier-grade reliability, security, trustworthiness, and leverage existing technology solutions, as appropriate, including, but not limited to, aggregation platform solutions such as MobiledgeX, or the interconnection mechanisms developed as part of the GSMA MultiOperator MEC experience.

Alex Sinclair
CTO,
GSMA

“Operators are very well placed to provide capabilities like low latency through their network assets. It is essential for enterprises to be able to reach all of their customers from the edge of any network. Based on the GSMA Operator Platform specification, Telco Edge Cloud will provide enterprise developers and aggregators with a consistent way to reach connected customers.”

Xiongyan Tang
Chief Scientist,
China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute;
Chief Architect, Intelligent Network Center,
China Unicom

“Edge cloud will build a unified network edge ecosystem, providing diversified and customized products and services, and multiple-platform capabilities. It will also realize more extensive boundary-crossing cooperation to meet the requirements of digital transformation of various vertical industries.

Operators are very well placed to provide capabilities like low latency through their network assets. It is essential for enterprises to be able to reach all of their customers from the edge of any network. Based on the GSMA Operator Platform specification, Telco Edge Cloud will provide enterprise developers and aggregators with a consistent way to reach connected customers.”

Claudia Nemat
Board Member Technology & Innovation,
Deutsche Telekom

“Edge Cloud has an exciting potential to enable and enhance many innovative experiences for our customers. I welcome this operator initiative to take ownership of the edge opportunity by joining forces to deliver our capabilities in a federated edge service. Leveraging MobiledgeX as platform partner and aggregator in the federation puts operators on the best track to create scale, bring in the developer community, and make a market impact.”

Yoshiaki Uchida
Member of the Board, Executive Vice President, Executive Director-Technology Sector,
KDDI

“Edge Cloud is a promising opportunity to enable the development of services that need low-latency connection, and to meet various service demands from enterprise customers. The innovation of telecommunication services will be accelerated by the enhancement of service quality and the customer experience in real-time applications such as cloud XR and cloud gaming.”

Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology and Global Innovation Officer,
Orange

“To address the edge-cloud computing market, operators need to work very closely together to create an interoperable platform and to monetize their extremely valuable assets. We, at Orange, believe that it is a must-have to unleash new business opportunities enabled by both edge computing and 5G. That’s why we are proud to support the GSMA Telco Edge Cloud initiative.”

Mark Chong
Group CTO,
Singtel

“We believe that a cross-border edge-cloud platform, which serves bandwidth needs and lower-latency requirements, is what’s needed at this time as it allows organizations with multi-market operations to deploy and manage time-critical applications closer to where the data is collected. We look forward to collaborating with GSMA and the other telcos on this exciting initiative.”

Dr. Kang-Won Lee
Vice President and Head of Cloud Labs,
SK Telecom

“Edge Cloud is a key enabler to unlock the full potential of emerging applications like AR/VR, cloud robots, and smart factory with improved QoS, real-time intelligence, security, and data privacy. In order to provide a seamless global MEC experience to our customers, it is critical that mobile operators around the world come together and join forces.

SK Telecom is excited to collaborate with global partners, bringing our edge-cloud experience and tech leadership to the team to realize the vision of mobile edge cloud.”

Enrique Blanco
Group CTO,
Telefonica

“The market needs an edge cloud that meets the enterprise demands to service their customers. Telecom operators are in an extremely good position to provide a trusted and open edge cloud, so enterprises can maximize their service offering and business opportunities being as close as needed to their customers.”

Elisabetta Romano
Chief Innovation & Partnership Officer,
TIM

“Edge Cloud is a fundamental asset for the new requirements of many business segments and customers.

Edge Cloud will be a formidable enabler to transform the network from a bit pipe to an effective digital business platform, thanks to flexible computing capacity and low access latency to computing resources.”