Private 5G: Two different approaches at the Coronation

This post originally appeared on June 9 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

 A month ago, the UK and much of the world watched King Charles' #Coronation in London.

They were able to watch it partly because of the immense efforts of the various #broadcasters involved. Since then, two separate stories have emerged about the role of dedicated #5G connectivity in the TV coverage:

1) A dedicated private 5G network supplied by Neutral Wireless and BBC R&D, used by several broadcasters
2) A slice of the Vodafone public 5G network, enabled for ITN, based on Ericsson gear

In the comments I've linked to various articles and a great interview on Ericsson's Voice of 5G podcast show. They have details of the other partners involved too. In the BBC blog post they also mention a 3rd network on a separate cell, working alongside Sony, for low-latency (I think) remote-controlled cameras.

The #Private 5G network used 8 radios along The Mall (the tree-lined road between Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Sq). It used 2x 40MHz channels in the UK's shared-licence band between 3.8-4.2GHz, with 1Gbps capacity (mostly for uplink). It was used by around 60 devices - I guess mostly cameras and test equipment via gateways, plus the BBC's onsite radio studio. They also used LiveU bonding systems to add capacity from public MNO networks. I'm not sure about the vendors of the radios or standalone core.

The 5G SA #networkslicing solution was apparently used for a single sector at a 3.5GHz temporary base station aimed at the Palace balcony. It also worked with LiveU. On the podcast, Andrea Donà (VF's head of network in the UK) talks about "dedicating bandwidth to one sector for the slice" and carving out some of the uplink capacity.

One thing that is unclear to me is how many other users were sharing the VF standalone 5G network hosting the slice - SA hasn't been fully launched commercially in the UK, although in January VF said it had invited selected users to trial it. I also don't know whether the 5G NSA and SA networks were sharing the radio resource, or if they use separate channels.

The public 4G / 5G networks (and also Wi-Fi bands) in the area were pretty overloaded, despite additional mobile towers adding capacity. The Vodafone / Ericsson podcast notes that VF uses "all the bands" at major events (although there's no #mmWave 5G in the UK yet) - so including 4G at 2.1GHz and 2.6GHz, and some lower bands for 2G/3G.

My take from this is that #private5G is considerably more mature than #5Gslicing, but that both are interesting for broadcasters. Both need quite a lot of specialist engineering, but TV is a sector with lots of very clever specialists and great ability to set up temporary networks. Of course, both networks were *outdoors* which meant that the thick stonework of the palace and Westminster Abbey weren't relevant.

One last note - the huge bulk of broadcast audiovisual output at the coronation would have used dedicated #PMSE wireless for cameras and microphones. But the #UHF spectrum debate is for another post.

 

Which will be more important for 4G/5G coverage expansion: Neutral Host, or RAN-Sharing?

There are increasing demands for better mobile coverage in areas that are technically complex, or which struggle economically with traditional MNO deployment models. 5G's use of new and higher frequencies will exacerbate the problems.

Even with a shift to pure private networks for some enterprises, there will still be a need for the public mobile networks to have better coverage for their subscribers in places such as:

• In-building locations, including both private offices and public venues
• Metro in-fill sites, needed to densify cellular networks in busy cities - but where cell-siting and connectivity challenges can be immense
• Rural areas, where mobile users are sparse and sometime lower-ARPU
• Along road and rail routes, especially where new connected vehicle uses are expected
• Anywhere with few people, but more IoT devices
• Business sites where multi-operator connectivity is needed (eg construction sites)

There are various approaches emerging to solve these issues:

• More flexible / cheaper RAN deployment options for individual MNOs to extend their own networks
• RAN sharing (including national roaming)
• Neutral host networks (NHNs)
• Various hybrid schemes with government involvement

The middle pair -  NHNs and RAN-sharing - are perhaps the two most interesting, as they fit with a lot of other developments around local and dynamic spectrum licensingto , OpenRAN and NFV, and a move to multi-MNO collaboration.

Yet which will win out, and in what contexts?
 
RAN sharing involves 2+ existing mobile operators combining network assets to save costs, perhaps through a joint venture. There are various types with differing levels of sophistication, from sharing physical towers & power, through to shared backhaul, core networks, baseband units & even spectrum. (MORAN, MOCN, etc) 

Neutral hosts are 3rd parties which build a RAN (and may have spectrum of their own) and which then sign up national MNOs or new niche/private cellular providers as tenants. Again, there are various technical and commercial models emerging. 

In theory, NHNs are more flexible, and push the capex to the new host operator. 

But what are the practicalities? Many questions arise: 

• Coverage locations & backhaul availability. What works best in rural, metro, indoor or industrial locations?
• Does an NHN need a core network? Standalone? Also VoLTE?
• Does this all apply to 4G, 5G, or both? 
• Where do OpenRAN or modern DAS & small-cells fit best? If these overlap with NFV and netwrk-slicing, can each "tenant" MNO bring its own software, if they want?
• How does security work for all parties? This is a huge and diverse minefield, relating to everything from RF interference and license conditions, to the physical integrity of network elements, down to lawful intercept and data-collection requirements.
• What are the contractual & regulatory hurdles? 
• What about other stakeholders like venue owners, property companies, towerco's and local authorities? 
• Who puts all of this together? What's the value chain, and which systems integrators and other partners will be involved?
• Will a neutral-host also offer neutral-edge computing capabilities?

There are no easy answers to all of this - the answer will generally be "it depends", both on use-case and national market.
 

I'll cover all these topics & more in next week's 2nd Neutral Host workshop in London on November 21st. Full details and registration page here: [link]

MEC and network-edge computing is overhyped and underpowered

I keep hearing that Edge Computing is the next big thing - and specifically, in-network edge computing models such as MEC. (See here for a list of all the different types of "edge"). 

I hear it from network vendors, telcos, some consultants, blockchain-based startups and others. But, oddly, very rarely from developers of applications or devices.

My view is that it's important, but it's also being overhyped. Network-edge computing will only ever be a small slice of the overall cloud and computing domain. And because it's small, it will likely be an addition to (and integrated with) web-scale cloud platforms. We are very unlikely to see edge-first providers become "the next Amazon AWS, only distributed".

Why do I think it will be small? Because I've been looking at it through a different lens to most: power. It's a metric used by those at the top- and bottom ends of the computing industry, but only rarely by those in the middle, such as network owners. This means they're ignoring a couple of orders of magnitude.

(This is a long post. You might want to grab a coffee first....)


How many zeroes?

Cloud computing involves huge numbers. There are many metrics that you can use - numbers of servers, processors, standard-sized equipment racks, floorspace and so on. But the figure that gets used most among data-centre folk is probably power consumption in watts, or more commonly here kW, MW & GW. (Yes, it's a lower-case k for kilo). 

Power is useful, as it covers the needs not just of compute CPUs and GPUs, but also storage and networking elements in data centres. It's not perfect, but given that organising and analysing information is ultimately about energy it's a valid, top-level metric. [Hey, I've got a degree in physics, not engineering. Helloooo, thermodynamics & entropy!]

Roughly speaking, the world's big data centres have a total power consumption of about 100GW. A typical one might have a capacity of 30MW, but a number of the world's largest data centres already use over 100MW individually, and there are enormous plans for locations with 600MW or even 1GW (link). No, they're not all running at full power, all the time - but that's true of any computing platform.

This growth is partly driven by an increase in the number of servers and equipment racks needed (hence growing floor-space for these buildings). But it also reflects power consumption for each server, as chips get more powerful. Most equipment racks use 3-5kW of power, but some can go as high as 20kW if that power - and cooling - is available.

So, to power "the cloud" needs 100GW, a figure that is continuining to grow rapidly. We are also seeing a rise in smaller, regional data-centres in second- and third-tier cities. Companies and governments often have private data-centres as well. These vary quite a bit, but 1-5MW is a reasonable benchmark.


How many decimal places?

At the other end of the computing power spectrum, are devices, and the components inside them. Especially for battery-powered devices, managing the power-budget down to watts or milliwatts is critical. This is the "device edge".

• Sensors might use less than 10mW when idle & 100mW when actively processing data
• A Raspberry Pi might use 0.5W
• A smartphone processor might use 1-3W
• An IoT gateway (controlling various local devices) might be 5-10W
• A laptop might draw 50W
• A decent crypto mining rig might use 1kW

New innovations are pushing the boundaries. Some researchers are working on sub-milliwatt vision processors (link). ARM has designs able to run machine-learning algorithms on very low-powered devices.

But perhaps the most interesting "device edge" is the future top-end Nvidia Pegasus board, aimed at self-driving vehicles. It is a 500W supercomputer. That might sound a lot, but it's still less than 1% of the engine power on most cars. A top-end Tesla P100D puts over 500kW to the wheels in "ludicrous mode", or 1000x that figure. Cars' aircon might use 2kW, to give context.

Of course, all of these device-edge computing platforms are numerous. There are billions of phones, and hundreds of millions of vehicles and PCs. Potentially, we'll get 10s of billions of sensors. Most aren't coordinated, though. 


And in the middle?

So we have milliwatts at one end of distributed computing, and gigawatts at the other, from device to cloud.

So what about the middle, where the network lives?

There are many companies talking about MEC (multi-access edge computing) and fog-computing products, with servers designed to run at cellular base stations, network aggregation points, and also in fixed-network nodes and elsewhere. 

Some are "micro-data-centres" capable of holding a few racks of servers near the largest cell towers. The very largest might be 50kW shipping-container sized units, but those will be pretty rare and will obviously need a dedicated power supply.

It's worth noting here that a typical macro-cell tower might have a power supply of 1-2kW. So if we consider that maybe 10% could be dedicated to a compute platform rather than the radio (a generous assumption), we get 100-200W, in theory. Or in other words, a cell tower edge-node will be less than half as powerful as a single car's computer.

Others are smaller server units, intended to hook into cellular small-cells, home gateways, cable street-side cabinets or enterprise "white boxes". For these, 10-30W is more reasonable.

Imagine the year 2023

Let's think 5 years ahead. By then, there could probably be 150GW of large-scale data centres, plus a decent number of midsize regional data-centres, plus private enterprise facilities.

And we could have 10 billion phones, PCs, tablets & other small end-points contributing to a distributed edge, although obviously they will spend a lot of time in idle-mode. We might also have 10 million almost-autonomous vehicles, with a lot of compute, even if they're not fully self-driving. 

Now, imagine we have a very-bullish 10 million "deep" network-compute nodes, at cell sites large and small, built into WiFi APs or controllers, and perhaps in cable/fixed streetside cabinets. They will likely have power ratings between 10W and 300W, although the largest will be numerically few in number. Choose 100W on average, for a simpler calculation. (Frankly, this is a generous forecast, but let's run with it for now).

And let's add in 20,000 container-sized 50kW units, or repurposed central-offices-as-datacentres, as well. (Also generous)

In other words, we might end up with:

150GW large data centres
50GW regional and corporate data centres
20,000x 50kW = 1GW big/aggregation-point "network-edge"
10m x 100W = 1GW "deep" network-edge nodes
1bn x 50W = 50GW of PCs
10bn x 1W = 10GW "small" device edge compute nodes
10m x 500W = 5GW of in-vehicle compute nodes
10bn x 100mW = 1GW of sensors & low-end devices

Now admittedly this is a very crude analysis. And a lot of devices will be running idle most of the time, and may need to offload functions to save battery power. Laptops are often switched off entirely. But equally, network-edge computers won't be running at 100%, 24x7 either.


The 1% edge

So at a rough, order-of-magnitude level, we can see that the total realistic "network edge", with optimistic assumptions, will account for less than 1% of total aggregate compute capability. And with more pessimistic assumptions, it might easily be just 0.1%. 

Any more will simply not be possible to power, unless there are large-scale upgrades to the electricity supply to network infrastructure - installed at the same time as backhaul upgrades for 5G, or deployment of FTTH. (And unlike copper, fibre can't even power small devices on its own). And haven't seen announcements of any telcos building hydroelectric power stations anywhere.

Decentralised, blockchain-based edge "fogs" are unlikely to really solve this problem either, even if they also use decentralised, blockchain-based power supply and management.

Now it could be argued that this 0.1-1% of computing workloads will be of such pivotal importance, that they will bring everything else into their orbit and indirect control. Could the "edge" really be the new frontier? 

I think not.

In reality, the reverse is more likely. Either device-based applications will selectively offload certain workloads to the network, or the webscale clouds will distribute certain functions. Yes, there will be some counter-examples, where the network-edge is the control point for certain verticals or applications - I think some security functions make sense, for instance, as well as an evolution of today's CDNs. But will IoT management, or AI, be concentrated in these edge nodes? It seems improbable.


Conclusion & TL:DR

In-network edge-computing architectures, such as MEC, will become more important. There are various interesting use-cases. But despite that, they will struggle to live up to the hype. 

There will be almost no applications that run *only* in the network-edge - it’ll be used just for specific workloads or microservices, as a subset of a broader multi-tier application. The main compute heavy-lifting will be done on-device, or on-cloud. As such, collaboration between edge-compute providers and industry/webscale cloud will be needed, as the network-edge will only be a component in a bigger solution, and will only very rarely be the most important component. 

One thing is definite: mobile operators won’t become distributed quasi-Amazons, running image-processing for all nearby cars or industry 4.0 robots in their networks, linked via 5G. 

Yes, MEC nodes could host Amazon Greengrass or other functions on a wholesale basis, but few developers will want to write directly to telcos' distributed-cloud APIs on a standalone basis, with or without network-slicing or 5G QoS mechanisms.

Indeed, this landscape of compute resource may throw up some unintended consequences. Ironically, it seems more likely that a future car's hefty computer, and abundant local power, could be used to offload tasks from the network, rather than vice versa.

Comments and feedback are very welcome. I'm aware I've made many assumptions here, and will doubtless generate various comments and detailed responses, either on my blog or LinkedIn posts. I haven't seen an "end to end" analysis of compute power before - if there's any tweaks to my back-of-envelope calculations, I'd welcome suggestions. If you'd like to contact me about projects or speaking engagements, I can be reached via information at disruptive-analysis dot com.

2nd Workshop on Enterprise/Private Cellular, December 1st, London

NEW: Disruptive Analysis & Rethink Research joint workshop on Enterprise Cellular Networks, London, December 1st, 2017

At the end of May, I co-ran a day-long workshop with Caroline Gabriel covering enterprise and private LTE, for industry verticals, neutral-hosts, indoors, government and other environments.

We had c20 people involved, with a mix of presentations, group discussions and exercises, and ample time for networking. The event was held under Chatham House rules, so people could talk confidentially without direct attribution of comments.

Six months later, we're repeating the workshop, on December 1st in Central London. A limited number of places are available.

New mobile devices/applications and the emergence of the Industrial IoT means that high-quality – often mission-critical – networks are required for new systems and applications. These can span both on-premise coverage (eg at a port, factory, office, wind-farm or hospital) and the wide-area (eg for smart cities or future rail networks). 

A lot has progressed in 2017, and I'm expecting 2018 to bring further developments:

• Regulators in some markets have actively looked to provide frequency ranges for public safety, large businesses and other uses.
• Every spectrum conference I've been to has had a session or two on shared bands, and is also taking unlicensed technologies more seriously.
• Rules on CBRS have solidified in the US, albeit with possible changes proposed to the FCC. Many industries and major companies (eg the oil sector) are seriously engaged.
• MulteFire is looking "real", with deployments (and devices) expected next year.
• Vendors including Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have all indicated growing interest in private cellular, as well as host of smaller players, or WiFi specialists looking to add cellular radios.
• The 5G community is recognising that "verticals" may not always be best-addressed by traditional MNOs, and may require new models. Even most operators concede that they can't do everything - especially for industrial IoT connectivity or uses with heavy legal liability or certification requirements.
• Various large industrial and utility/rail players have shown a lot of interest in private LTE, alongside WiFi meshes, LPWAN and other vertical-oriented network technologies.
• Community, rural and emerging-market players have started to look at cellular in unlicensed/shared bands to reduce costs and improve coverage. 

Workshop structure & Coverage

The day will have a maximum of 30 attendees to ensure a high level of discussion and interaction. We expect a diverse mix of service providers, vendors, regulators and other interested parties such as enterprises, investors and developers. 

It will be suitable for C-level executives, strategists, product management, marketing functions, CTO office, market analysts and regulatory affairs specialists.  

It will be led by myself and Rethink Research’s Caroline Gabriel (link). We are both well-known industry figures, with many years of broad communications industry analysis – and outspoken views – between us.

 

Topics to be discussed include:

• Key market drivers: IoT, automation, mobile workers, vertical-specific operational and regulatory issues, indoor coverage, democratisation of wireless expertise
• Spectrum-sharing, including unlicensed, light/local-licensing and CBRS-type models. What bands are different countries' regulators looking at? 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz, 4GHz, 28GHz, others?
• Evolution of key enabling technologies such as MulteFire, 5G, NB-IoT, network-slicing, SDN, small cells, edge computing, and enterprise-grade IMS cores
• Regulatory/policy issues: spectrum allocation, competition, roaming, repeaters, national infrastructure strategies and broader “Industry 4.0” economic goals
• The shifting roles of MVNOs, MVNEs, neutral hosts and future “slice operators”
• Numbering and identity: eSIM, multi-IMSI, MNC codes
• How will voice & UC & push-to-talk work on private cellular networks?
• Commercial impacts, new business model opportunities & threats to incumbents
• Vendor dynamics: Existing network equipment vendors, enterprise solution providers, vertical wireless players, managed services companies, new industrial & Internet players (eg GE, Google), implications for BSS/OSS, impact of open-source

(I've covered various of these themes in previous posts and presentations. If you want more detail about some of my thinking, see links here and here and here. We will be going into a lot more depth in the workshop itself. And for a quick 20-minute “taster”, see the video of my presentation from the recent TADSummit event in Lisbon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rQm1_Kv0c&t=8s )

The workshops will take place at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair, central London [link]. It will run from 9am-5pm, with plenty of time for networking and interactive discussion. Come prepared to think and talk, as well as listen – these are “lean-forward” days. Coffee and lunch are included.

The attendance fee is £699+VAT, with a discount for a second attendee. Payment can be made via credit card (see Paypal Buy Now button below), or purchase-order & invoice on request.  

Note: sometimes Paypal can be a bit awkward, especially with corporate cards or accounts. Drop me an email if you experience any problems or for further details: 
information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Normal Price

1 Attendee (inc 20% VAT) £838.80 GBP 2 Attendees (inc 20% VAT) £1,500.00 GBP

Thoughts on in-building wireless - and an upcoming client webinar

I've been pondering some of the side-effects and necessary enablers of the accelerating wireless evolution path we're seeing. As well as spectrum issues I've covered a lot recently, deploying indoor infrastructure is going to be another one of them. 

It is not a new assertion that indoor networks are important for enterprise. The frustrations of poor indoor cellular coverage are universal, while businesses of all types need to provide employees and guests with high-quality Wi-Fi.

(I'll cover trends in home Wi-Fi in a later post, while I've already written about industrial facilities in a number of previous ones, such as here, as the issues are as much about spectrum as about infrastructure and planning.)

Various solutions abound for providing good signal indoors – distributed antenna systems (DAS), small cells, or even just deployment of lower-frequency bands in outdoor networks, with better penetration through walls. Yet costs remain considerable, especially as usage increases near-exponentially. Upgrading or retro-fitting existing installations often requires hard economic decisions, given that most such investments are not directly “monetised”. Suitable expertise, foresight, planning tools and ongoing monitoring/reporting are important.

The future, however, will accelerate the role of in-building/on-site wireless connectivity – in both predictable and unpredictable fashion. If we consider what a building might look like in the year 2030, say – and how it may be used and occupied – we can start to see the challenges and opportunities.

As well as today’s well-known and well-described uses of wireless (smartphones and laptops on Wi-Fi and cellular networks), we can expect to see a huge number of new uses emerge. This means that today’s implementations will require future-proofing, to support the unknowns of tomorrow. For example, consider the implications of: 

• IoT deployments for smart buildings, such as a proliferation of sensors for heating, security, or the operation of elevators. These may require better coverage in unusual places – in ceiling voids, lift-shafts, basements and so on. Bandwidth and latency requirements will vary hugely, from life-critical but low-data fire/carbon monoxide sensors, to networked video cameras, or once-an-hour reporting from water tanks.
• Moving devices such as robots or automated trolleys, delivering products around the building. While some will be fully-autonomous, others will need constant wireless connectivity and control.
• 5G networks will be deployed from around 2020, with further evolutions in following years. These may be extremely demanding on in-building coverage solutions, especially as some networks are likely to use frequencies above 6GHz – perhaps even as high as 80GHz. Extensive use of MIMO and beam-forming may also add complexity to indoor implementations. (A new variant of WiFi known as WiGig also uses 60GHz frequencies)
• Likely huge growth in narrowband wireless, connecting low-powered (but maybe very dense) networks of sensors or other endpoints. These may use 3GPP technologies such as NB-IoT, or other options such as LoRa and SigFox.

All of these trends imply very different traffic patterns. It is not realistic just to extrapolate from current usage – robots may go to places in buildings where humans do not, for example. Mobility requirements may evolve – and so will regulations.

It is not just new classes of device and application which will need to be supported by well-designed coverage infrastructure, but also new classes of service provider that need to access them.

• The advent of new unlicensed or shared-spectrum models of frequency allocation (eg CBRS in the US, or MuLTEfire) may mean the arrival of new operator types – dedicated IoT solutions providers that “bring their own wireless”; enterprises acting as their own local on-site MNOs; various models of “neutral host” and so on.
• Private enterprise cellular networks are starting to become more widespread. Some governments are allocating spectrum for industries like utilities or smart-cities, while equipment vendors are offering optimised enterprise-grade cellular infrastructure.
• Potential future regulations for emergency-services wireless connections. Police and fire authorities are increasingly using broadband mobile, both for humans and remote-sensing devices.
• Distributed-mesh service providers, that operate as decentralised networks with micropayments, or as community initiatives. Some may use blockchain-type arrangements for shared-ownership or membership fees.

One of the unknowns is about the convergence (or divergence) of different network types. On one hand, cellular networks are embracing Wi-Fi for offload, or for multi-network aggregation, especially as they worry that returning flat-rate data plans may stress their networks. On the other, some networks are looking at running 4G/5G in unlicensed spectrum instead of (or in addition to) Wi-Fi. Yet more service providers are adopting a “Wi-Fi first” approach, reverting to MVNO models for cellular where needed. Future permutations will likely be more complex still. All will (ideally) need to be well-suppported by indoor wireless infrastructure.

For property developers and owners, the quality of indoor networks is increasingly key in determining valuations and rental occupancy. Already seen in hotels, and office new builds, it will be important for today’s new constructions and refurbishments to support adequate flexibility and headroom for the next decade or more.

This takes on further emphasis if you consider the trend towards “buildings-as-a-service”, exemplified by organisations such as WeWork. These new classes of facility often incorporate wireless connectivity both as a billable service element, but also to enable their owners to manage the properties effectively, in terms of energy-efficiency and security. Other forms of monetisation and data-analytics around wireless location-sensing/tracking are also becoming more important.

Lastly, in-building challenges will be driven by the specific location and industry, which themselves may change in nature over the next decade. New building materials, construction practices and regulations will impact wireless in unpredictable ways – more metallic insulation perhaps, but also perhaps robot or pre-fabricated construction allowing wireless systems to be installed more easily. Individual industry verticals will have their own shifts – what will retail stores look like, and how will customers behave, in the era of home deliveries by drone, but more on-premise “experiences”, perhaps with AR/VR systems? What workplaces of the future look like, in an era of self-driving vehicles? Industrial facilities will become increasingly automated, with the largest uses of wireless connections being machines rather than humans. Hotels and airports will see shifts in data connectivity needs from employees and visitors, as application usage shifts.

Small cells look certain to play a more important role in future, and Wi-Fi is going to remain the most important indoor technology for many users and businesses (ignore the fantasists who think it's at risk from 4G / 5G - see my earlier post here).

There are no easy answers here – even if you construct good scenarios for the future, undoubtedly we will be surprised by events. But some form of upfront discipline in designing and building indoor wireless solutions is ever more critical, given the unknowns. The more future-proofing is possible, the lower the potential risk of being caught out.

  

On October 5^th, at 3pm BST / 4pm CET / 10am EDT, I will be presenting on some of these topics on a webinar for client iBwave. A link to the event is here

Does Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods redefine "Edge Computing"?

Yesterday's announcement that Amazon is acquiring retailer Whole Foods has meant I've adapted this piece from an earlier draft version. I'm expecting a few people to read this who aren't normally involved in technology, telecoms or cloud sectors - and who are likely to be unfamiliar with some of the terminology. Welcome!

In a nutshell: I don't think Amazon is purely interested in disrupting the food-retail business, or creating distribution/pickup centres for online shopping. I think Amazon is also interested in local, mini data-centres for its huge cloud business. This means it may be able to disrupt other telecoms/IT businesses, and steer some "edge computing" technology standards and paths, if it plays this well. There was already a lot going on in this space - hence my originally-intended post - but this deal changes the dynamic even more.

There are a number of reasons to put data-centres (physical locations with servers) close out to the "edge" of the network, near to end-users connecting with fixed broadband or mobile devices. 

Top of the list is latency, or delay: how long it takes an app or website to respond. This is partly driven by the speed of light (300,000km/s), as well as the efficiency and design of the electronics. Physically-closer data centres can mean low latency, and faster applications: critical for "realtime" uses such as IoT controls, or gaming, VR and many other areas. Low-latency is a big part of the pitch for new types of network anyway (eg 5G mobile), but it also implies that speed-of-light delays must be minimised, by putting processing/storage closer to the user.

Other reasons to have edge computing include data sovereignty laws (there's a growing set of rules around cross-border data flows) and avoiding the need to ship huge volumes of data all the way to the cloud, process it remotely, and then ship it back again. Avoiding possibly-clogged core and transport networks in the middle is cheaper as well as faster. 
Network cacheing of big chunks of content, such as frequently-watched videos, is another reason - this has been done for years, but pushing it deeper into the network may be important as usage grows.

Edge-computing may turn out to be particularly important for things like machine-learning, and other forms of AI such as image-recognition or speech analysis, or large-scale use of sensors. That could mean sound from talking to Siri or Amazon Alexa, industrial IoT installations watching for problems with machinery, cameras from self-driving vehicles and so on. It may be that only 1% of data collected is interesting - so processing the bulk locally, to sift out the important nuggets or create alarms, could be better than shipping never-ending terabytes back to a central point.

There are lots of angles to edge computing, and lots of emerging standards and visions. I've recently been looking at this area a lot, and I think some participants don't realise how many possible locations for "the edge" there are. It's very badly-defined. It also needs to be seen in the context of an ongoing battle for control of "the cloud" between big Internet players like Amazon and Google and Microsoft, versus the network providers - and perhaps also enterprise/IoT specialists like GE, Cisco and IBM.

The critical point here is that the "edge" can be thought of as being "in the network" (at aggregation points or some sort of fixed/radio node), or at a user's premise, or even in the device itself. It might even turn out to be in a specific chip in the device, or we may find that devices are chained together, with a local gateway acting as a hub for "capillary" connections to individual sensors, bluetooth headsets, smart-home gadgets and so on. In theory, compute and storage could exist at any of these points (or all of them, with dynamic control).

The telecoms industry is mostly focused on MEC - originally Mobile Edge Computing, now redefined with the M for Multi-Access. In theory, MEC is the concept of distributing compute functions deeper into the telecoms network - perhaps colocated with cell-sites, local cell aggregation points, fixed-network central offices, or even with small/pico-cells inside buildings, or by the side of the road. Some in the industry position it as a way for telcos (especially mobile operators) to create a distributed cloud in order to compete with Amazon - while others are more pragmatic and just see it as a way to extend new virtualised bits of the network control itself, outside the data-centre. There are versions of MEC that couple tightly with major NFV initiatives, and others that are more independent.

The original vision of MEC - a server at every base station - now seems to be fading as the economics favour larger aggregation centres. A possible exception, however, is for in-building deployments hosting special, location-specific applications and functions - perhaps IoT control in a factory, local media-streaming for a stadium and so on. In those cases, it's not clear whether the network operator would be a classical telco, or perhaps a new "neutral host" or enterprise-owned player. This was a theme I looked at in my recent. Private & Enterprise Cellular workshop (link; more on that in another post).

There are also various other approaches to edge computing - a concept called Fog is being pitched as a multi-tiered approach to distributing compute resources, and Cloudlets are another. It's very dynamic and multi-faceted, and what might work well for bulky content distribution might be inappropriate for controlling swarms of drones, or putting better security controls at the edge. Some of the network internals for 5G may themselves need to be put at the edge (perhaps identity functions, or congestion-management), and there is a desire to use that as an opportunity to host applications or data for other parties as well, as a new revenue stream.

Meanwhile, the nature of IT and web applications themselves is changing, with use of "serverless" computing architectures, and a shift to doing lots of processing at the edge for machine-learning and other tasks, including the rise of GPU processors. I recently went to see a presentation by ARM, which was talking about doing more processing on low-end IoT devices in silicon, without needing the network much at all. That's right out at the "real" edge.

[It's worth noting that ARM is owned by Japanese telco/InternetCo Softbank, which has also taken a stake in GPU vendor Nvidia and has just bought scary-walking-robot company Boston Dynamics from Google. It's perhaps the only telco to understand "edge" fully]

So... where does Amazon, and especially Whole Foods, fit into this?

At the moment, Amazon Web Services has around 40-50 main data centres, split into regions and "availability zones" (see this link). It's also got servers (mostly for content-delivery, a CDN) in various other companies' data-centres, notably telcos. Its huge scale has meant that most other providers of "hyperscale" cloud struggle to compete, beyond the very largest IT players. The telcos had high hopes for cloud computing a few years ago, but have now mostly shifted away from head-on competition with AWS.

Instead, the telecom industry is looking at MEC (and also CORD, central office rearchitected as a data-centre) as possible differentiators. By having localised compute resources at the network-edge, it sees an opportunity for monetising tomorrow's distributed, low-latency applications - as well as distributing its own (now virtualised) internal functions.

In theory, MEC could either allow telecom operators to create "distributed Amazon" rivals for a wide IT/Internet audience, or host AWS and its peers' servers locally, for a fee. In fact, the Amazon-on-MEC concept got a boost recently with Amazon's announcement of its Greengrass distributed IoT edge architecture (see link). I've spoken to some MEC players - vendors and operators - who are quite excited by this.

But now, Amazon has possibly just thrown a spanner in the works, at least in terms of the "MEC at network aggregation points for general cloud apps" story. With Whole Foods, it now has a footprint of 450-odd locations, principally in the US but also in London and elsewhere. Typically these are in city centres - and being supermarkets, they likely have good electricity supply (and even cold rooms) that could be used for servers, rather than just kale and houmous. It's not obvious why developers would prefer to negotiate with mutliple telcos' MEC units - and suffer probable less-than-easy purchasing mechanisms compared to Amazon's web portal.

At the moment, Amazon has made no announcement about this. This is speculation on my part. In my view the pieces fit together quite nicely, but I have absolutely no inside track on this.

That's not to mean that the acquisition isn't also - even mainly - about food retail, local distribution, maybe even drone-depots. But it does mean that network operators may have much less leverage on AWS in terms of access to large-scale, city-by-city locations for hosting data in future MEC deployment. To be fair, this doesn't impact the MEC story further out, at individual premises or by the side of the street, but there is (a) plenty of time before edge-computing proves those concepts, and (b) other opportunities for Amazon to get to those types of locations.

EDIT: One other thing to consider here is how they go from a local data-centre to the network. It may need local break/out in, which telcos often avoid doing. Or it could be that Amazon builds its own local wireless networks, eg using LoRaWAN for smart cities, or even gets CBRS licences for private localised cellular networks.

Just as a final note, I'll leave a quick "I told you so!" note here. OK, I got the target wrong and didn't expect an outright acquisition, but an Amazon+Retailer combination was something I thought about exactly a year before it happened.

Notes: If you'd like to get in touch with me about this topic, please contact Information AT disruptive-analysis dot com. I'll also be running another enterprise cellular workshop later in the year - drop me a message and I'll send details when they're available. I'm also writing a briefing report on MEC in my capacity as associate director of STL Partners' Future of the Network programme [link].