Edge Computing May be Disruptive Technology, Key to 5G

By Iain Gillott

October 4, 2017

Multi-access edge computing (MEC), which emerged on the wireless industry stage several years ago, has the potential to be as disruptive a technology as anything that is being discussed today – 5G New Radio, NFV/SDN, C-RAN. In fact, MEC is quite likely to help realize the promise of 5G.

Gillott

Simply put, MEC marries a radio with a data center. Today, that radio is LTE, but it could also be Wi-Fi, 5G New Radio or some combination of them all. The server component is a secure, virtualized platform that network owners can “open up” to third parties – content providers, application developers, etc.

iGR, a market research consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry, has recently published a new market study that analyzes multi-access edge computing, including the architecture, the potential use cases, the pros and cons of the solution, and potential U.S. enterprise spending from 2017 to 2026.

By putting content and applications at the edge, the network owner and the enterprise can realize operational and cost efficiencies. And that content can be anything – streaming video, augmented reality, location-based services, connected vehicle, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

iGR’s new market study, MEC: U.S. Enterprise Spending on the New Small Cell Market, 2017-2026, provides a model of how much U.S. enterprises will spend over the next 10 years on MEC-based solutions. The market study also details the MEC architecture, the requirements for its deployment and MEC’s potential use cases.

Iain Gillott is the president and founder of iGR.