Deutsche Telekom and engineering firm Aricent have taken the wraps off an open source mobile edge compute platform designed to help operators rapidly develop and launch 5G applications and services.
According to the companies, the global edge computing market is expected to be worth $3 billion by 2025. In addition to the latency benefits of hosting applications and services at the edge of the network, edge computing – and in particular open source edge computing – lends operators much greater agility and allows them to monetise new 5G services from the outset, they said.
“We believe that edge computing will be a critical success factor to achieve the full benefits of 5G for our customers,” said Tomasz Gerszberg, SVP Edge Computing, Deutsche Telekom. “And we believe in joining forces with our ecosystem partners to accelerate innovation and the adoption of new technology.”
There is no firm date for when Deutsche Telekom and Aricent’s jointly-developed platform will be made available. Deutsche Telekom and Aricent said select components will start to roll out in 2019. The companies said they plan to strengthen their strategic partnership over the next three years, with Deutsche Telekom tapping Aricent’s consultancy, design, engineering and R&D services.
“Edge computing will provide value as it will deliver engaging and worthwhile subscriber experiences, and operators need the capabilities to bring that to fruition,” said Walid Negm, CTO of Aricent. “We are very excited to be partnering with Deutsche Telekom on this open source initiative. Our innovative solution enables forward looking operators to leverage their network and collaborate with application developers to leapfrog the competition and gain a competitive edge – at the edge.”
Deutsche Telekom is pushing hard on edge computing, which as well as making services more responsive, promises to make devices lighter and less power-hungry because processing and storage are hosted on the network.
At Mobile World Congress this year, the telco launched a new subsidiary, MobiledgeX, which is tasked with providing developers with the tools they need to come up with new applications and services that make the most of edge computing.