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05 March, 2020
Although we’ve missed out on the trumpets heralding the continued roll-out of 5G thanks to the cancellation of MWC 2020, there are significant early milestones to the full deployment of the technology being passed. The road is long, though, Tejas Rao, the managing director and global 5G offering lead at Accenture, tells George Malim.
28 October, 2019
A WEEK IN TELCO IT – 5G is starting strong, says Huawei. The company’s deputy chairman, Ken Hu, told its annual Mobile Broadband Forum (#MBBF) in Zurich, Switzerland last week that 5th Generation mobile communications “arrived faster than expected,” and that there are now 40 carriers in more than 20 countries supporting 136 different 5G-enabled devices. (more…)
17 January, 2019
We’re moving to a 5G world. It’ll be one where data is vital to our daily lives. Data now needs to be instantaneous. Any delay, even for an nth of a second, could be catastrophic in an always-on world. That nth could be a tenth of a second, nothing more. But no matter how fast your fibre connection, if information has to travel across continents to get to you, there’s going to be latency, writes Jack Pouchet, the vice president of business development at Vertiv.
Imagine sitting in an autonomous car at 70mph with vehicles whizzing all around you. That nth of a second could be the difference between a collision and a smooth journey home.
Smart cities, the Internet of Things (IoT), connected cars, online gaming and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are all driving the demand for instant connections. This, in turn, is driving the trend to edge computing.
On-the-edge computing, as the industry calls it, removes that latency and provides the instant connectivity the modern world and mission critical applications demand.
History to lead the future
As a result, the edge will both benefit from, and drive the development of, more reliable and faster internet connections. It makes for a shared future between the edge and 5G. However, it’s not just the future that connects them – these technologies could in fact benefit from key learnings in each other’s past evolution. The implementation of 4G LTE (long-term evolution) is a great example. Whereas 3G could connect society more easily, 4G truly brought high-speed data connectivity to the masses. It expanded quickly and became integral to society’s day-to-day life.
This illustrates that businesses and society will eagerly adopt any new developments in 5G as well. Given its correlation with the edge, it could imply that the edge needs to be 5G ready. But how can you be ready for something that’s undefined at the moment? This is not impossible, as it primarily means the edge needs to be communication ready, and this is already feasible. Vertiv can, for example, offer fully integrated and scalable systems with high-quality communications capabilities.
Another key learning from the 3G/4G/5G evolution is its inherent influence on infrastructure development. Whereas 3G allowed for places of leisure, such as McDonald’s and airports, to become connectivity hubs, 4G enabled the further implementation of technology globally, both in cities and rural areas. With the boost in implementation and usage also came an increased need for more robust, secure edge resources.
Similarly, the edge will see a change in infrastructure needs with the progress of 5G. We don’t yet know what 5G cellular architectures will look like. However, we know they will enable more consumer applications, as well as potential other applications we haven’t imagined yet. This means that telco, cloud and colocation architectures will evolve to meet 5G and edge needs. It is expected that cloud and colocation companies will continue to expand their footprint to provide services closer to users. This, combined with the continued deployment of edge-ready local infrastructure, matched to archetypes and use cases, will create an edge ecosystem that extends far beyond traditional small-space edge deployments.
The current edge
It seems like the direction of future developments is not as mysterious as one might think. So how ready is the industry for 5G and edge computing to really take hold? In an effort to understand and foresee future demand, Vertiv analysed a variety of emerging use cases, resulting in the ‘Edge Archetypes’ report. The report identified four primary edge archetypes:
This represents use cases where the amount of data makes it impractical to transfer over the network directly to the cloud, or from the cloud to the point-of-use, because of data volume, cost or bandwidth issues. This includes the technologies needed for smart cities.
This includes use cases where services are optimised for human consumption, for example smart retail and augmented reality. Speed is of the essence for these use cases, hence the need to use the edge.
This segment covers use cases where services are optimised for machine-to-machine consumption. Machines can process data much faster than humans and therefore require a higher speed. Examples include developments for Smart Grid and Defence force simulation.
The final archetype speaks to the imagination: it covers use cases that directly impact human health and safety – thus requiring speed and reliability. Technologies such as drones, digital health and smart transportation fall into this segment.
Developments in 5G cellular networks will both enable and drive the evolution of these archetypes, and the edge in general, to allow for the implementation of edge-dependent applications.
It might seem like these developments are still out of reach and need to be government-driven due to its vastness. However, the commercial sector is more likely to truly drive this evolution with the development of consumer-oriented services and apps – increasing the demand of the edge’s capabilities.
With the available knowledge at hand and the opportunity for the commercial sector to drive demand, the realisation of edge computing and 5G cellular networks might just be closer than you think.
13 December, 2018
The rubber is meeting the road in terms of 5G rollout for the major network operators, writes Mike O’Malley, the vice president of marketing at Radware.
31 October, 2018
In the second of a two-part article, Job Baldry, the marketing director of Infinera, explains that while 5G offers capacity, existing cellular networks rely heavily on fibre optic links to connect cell towers to the core network.
30 October, 2018
In the first of a two-part article, Jon Baldry, the marketing director of Infinera, explains that, with the recent release of latest 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standards and the first true 5G networks potentially coming on stream in 2018, 5G-ready transport networks continue to evolve into semi-unmapped territory.
05 July, 2018
If you happened to be one of Spotify’s investors, you’ll likely be smiling following the company’s US$27 billion debut on the US stock market. Long seen as the driving force behind the shift from purchasing music to streaming it, Spotify is one of many contemporary companies that depend on the infrastructure investments of global communications service providers (CSPs), without contributing to it. The same can be said of Netflix, currently valued at US$134 billion and growing. For CSPs, such services are a challenge, as they compete with their own services at the same time as depending utterly on their infrastructure for their success. So why should video games represent anything different, asks Javier Polo, the chief executive of PlayGiga?
18 June, 2018
SPONSORED ARTICLE
5G isn’t just an incremental increase in speed and bandwidth, it’s the new face of the network and a key driver of the digital revolution. Until now, the technology was regarded as a buzzword, or something “just around the corner.” But with a number of public demonstrations, including at the recent 2018 Olympics, by industry leaders including Vodafone, Intel, Huawei, Verizon, and more, it’s safe to say that we have reached the era of 5G.
07 June, 2018
The first pre-standard launches of 5G are due toward the end of 2018, writes Scott Sumner, the vice president of strategy at end-to-end network and application performance experts Accedian. However, standardised 5G will probably not arrive globally and at scale until 2021-2022. In the meantime, operators are upgrading their existing LTE networks to 4.5G.
17 April, 2018
Huawei became the first vendor to pass China’s 5G non-standalone (NSA) Core Network test. The test, which covers key Core Network technologies and service processes, is the third phase of the 5G R&D trial. The trial was organised by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group and conducted at the Beijing lab of the China Academy (more…)
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