Almost 90% of mobile ecosystem players in China identified edge computing as a major revenue opportunity in the 5G era, according to a new GSMA survey.
The new GSMA Intelligence report, called “Edge computing in the 5G era: Technology and market developments in China” and produced jointly with the Edge Computing Consortium ( ECC), notes that China’s leadership in edge computing, as demonstrated by early trials and deployments, is “being driven by government support for new technologies and operator investments in new 5G and IoT networks.”
GSMA Intelligence forecasts that Chinese operators will spend nearly $200 billion to deploy new 5G networks between 2018 and 2025.
Early edge computing deployments in China are mostly designed to serve the requirements of smart ports, smart campuses and smart factories.
The GSMA also highlighted that edge use cases such as autonomous driving, sporting events and gaming will be made possible over the next few years once 5G networks are widely available.
According to the ECC, there are currently more than 100 edge computing projects up and running in 40 cities in China across various sectors. These include projects in areas such as smart campus, smart manufacturing, AR/VR, cloud gaming, smart ports, smart mining and smart transportation.
However, the GSMA report notes that several critical questions remain, such as the most viable location of the network “edge”, the levels of investment required and the most appropriate business models.
“Judging by the pace of edge trials and early deployments, it is clear that the Chinese ecosystem is looking to play a leading role in the development of edge computing,” said Sihan Bo Chen, head of greater China for the GSMA. “Creating a favorable ecosystem environment that supports technology developments and fosters innovation will ultimately determine the pace and magnitude of edge deployments in China and beyond.”
“The goal of the Edge Computing Consortium (ECC) is to build a cooperative platform in the edge computing industry,” said Yu Xiaohui, vice chairman for the ECC. “After three years of unremitting efforts, the edge computing industry has advanced from 1.0 consensus stage to 2.0 implementation. ECC will continue to promote the scale application of edge computing in the major fields including mobile network, industrial internet, and enterprise IoT.”
Some of the companies who participated in the survey include China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE.
Many surveyed companies indicated that the edge should be located on-premise for key applications in smart factories, smart ports and smart campuses, to provide the best combination of ultra-low latency, realtime processing and analytics, network reliability and security. Deploying edge infrastructure at the district or city level can be a more cost-effective solution to cover a wider range of use cases, including smart cities, autonomous vehicles, cloud/edge immersive gaming and other services accessed and consumed on mobile. In such scenarios, the rapid rollout of 5G by the Chinese operators, combined with network slicing would provide the network capabilities required.
As the integration of new technologies such as edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI) into core and access networks grows in scale and complexity, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia, Ericsson and other network vendors will increasingly be seen as key partners for Chinese operators and cloud companies looking to deploy edge computing.
