The 5G mobile edge computing collaboration brings together Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge platform and Microsoft Azure
Verizon and Microsoft are collaborating to integrate the service provider’s on-site 5G Edge network with Azure edge services to enable ultra-low latency and faster connectivity help businesses enable and utilize real-time data analysis and delivery. The collaboration hopes to more easily enable on-site private 5G, allowing for increased power efficiencies and reduced costs of end user devices.
From Verizon’s perspective, the low latency that can be achieved using mobile edge computing (MEC) “will be increasingly vital as next generation wireless experiences emerge.”
Specifically, the companies said that 5G and MEC will be particularly useful for applications that incorporate computer vision, augmented, mixed and virtual reality, digital twins or machine learning, citing the real-time precision medicine in healthcare as a prime example. Real-time precision medicine, stated the press release, would leverage technologies like mixed reality and AI, and would be enabled by the increased speed, reduced latency and high bandwidth connectivity of 5G networks.
“We have built a network that provides real-world, 5G-enabled solutions today,” said Rima Qureshi, EVP and chief strategy officer at Verizon. “By bringing together Verizon’s 5G network and on-site 5G Edge platform with Microsoft’s expertise in cloud services, we will enable the development of the next generation technologies everyone has been envisioning.”
Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge platform, integrated with Microsoft Azure, is already being testing by logistics and supply chain solutions company Ice Mobility to help with computer vision assisted product packing, and the company feels that Verizon and Microsoft have “truly listened to [its] needs to provide automated real-time quality oversight and feedback.”
“We are especially excited to join Verizon and Microsoft to test how 5G and MEC can improve the quality assurance process,” said Mike Mohr, CEO of Ice Mobility.
By gathering data in near real-time on product packing errors, Ice Mobility has the potential to improve on-site quality assurance and save 15% to 30% in processing time.
“By leveraging Verizon’s 5G network integrated with Microsoft’s cloud and edge capabilities, developers and businesses can benefit from fast, secure and reliable connections to deliver seamless digital experiences from massive industrial IoT workloads to precision medicine,” said Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president Azure for Operators at Microsoft.
In related MEC news, Verizon and AWS recently added Atlanta, New York and Washington, DC to the list of locations where businesses and developers can build and deploy applications with AWS Wavelength at Verizon’s 5G Edge. Verizon and AWS launched the mobile edge computing (MEC) platform, which shortens the roundtrip data needs to travel by moving processing closer to the end user, last month in Boston and the Bay Area. The plan is to add five more cities by the end of 2020.
