AT&T this week hoisted another kite off its expanding 5G edge, showcasing incremental momentum accomplished with Google Cloud since the pair of companies kicked off a partnership 16 months ago. 

The network operator and hyperscaler integrated Google services and its edge computing offering to be deployed by enterprises on AT&T’s 5G network paired with AT&T’s on-premises multi-access edge compute (MEC) service and AT&T’s Network Edge. 

By combining AT&T’s Network Edge with Google Cloud, enterprises will be able to deploy applications at Google edge points of presence riding on AT&T’s networks, the companies explained. Google said it intends to activate at least 15 zones across major U.S. cities during the next few years, starting with Chicago later this year, followed by Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, and San Francisco. 

The network-based edge service — which is initially targeting video analytics and specialized features for retail, health care, manufacturing, and entertainment — won’t be commercially available until those zones are live. AT&T’s on-premises MEC services with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and IBM “are available today for businesses looking to make the most of data in their business sites, without routing traffic on our macro network,” Lourdes Charles, assistant VP of marketing at AT&T Business, wrote in response to questions. 

The update comes less than a week after AT&T sold its Network Cloud technology to Microsoft and shared plans to move its 5G network core, workloads, and services to Microsoft’s Azure for Operators platform. That agreement, although limited to AT&T’s mobile network functions riding on Microsoft’s cloud, underscores the increasingly blended and complicated approach 5G operators are taking to the cloud and the nascent edge market thus far.

AT&T claims a cohesive strategy, but the operator’s various alliances with cloud providers are confusing, according to Kathryn Weldon, research director at GlobalData. AT&T previously announced 5G edge partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Deloitte, and it isn’t alone in that regard.

AT&T not alone in blended edge strategy

The different goals AT&T hopes to achieve with each cloud or edge vendor and how they will jointly provide specific aspects of edge computing for each remains unclear, Weldon added.

“There have been so many announcements regarding operators’ relationships with hyperscalers for 5G edge that it would be helpful to get really specific about use cases. The immersive experience examples are a bit generic. It’s time for actual customer use cases to be cited, even if they are only in trial,” she wrote in a report. 

Google Cloud and AT&T said joint customers will gain near real-time access to features packed into Google’s cloud and some of its most popular services. 

“While the new initiatives leverage more Google capabilities, the announcement begs the question as to what things the partners have been working on for the last year,” Weldon added. “It isn’t clear why the listed Google elements could not have been brought in before.”

Real use case examples and actual service deployments notwithstanding, AT&T is off to a good start with Google Cloud, Patrick Filkins, senior research analyst at IDC, wrote in response to questions. “In the case of AT&T, having more cloud partners at this stage is better. It exposes them to the ability to sell more connectivity, and as they mention, potentially leverage 5G network APIs to deliver more programmable connectivity,” he explained.

This type of multicloud approach to the edge could enable AT&T and other operators to “generate more value as a server provider, beyond a one-size-fits-all offering,” Filkins added.

Operators embrace multicloud edge

Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, also reflected positively on AT&T’s multicloud approach because it presents the operator with more cross collaborations and “provides AT&T with more flexibility with both consumer and enterprise 5G service offerings.”

It remains unclear how prominent or successful Google Cloud will be in the evolving telco cloud and edge space, but it’s aspirations are on full display. The third-largest public cloud vendor inked various agreements with Nokia, Telus, Intel, Ericsson, and others during the first half of this year. 

“Google is in last place relative to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure, but this announcement is encouraging from a forward-momentum perspective,” Townsend said. 

AT&T and Verizon, the strongest operator proponents of 5G edge, remain somewhat split in their respective approach to the opportunity while T-Mobile US backloads edge into its 5G strategy, tapping Lumen Technologies as its initial preferred vendor to date, but recently hinted at more to come.

Verizon has deals with AWS and Microsoft for its network-based 5G edge plans, but more recently signaled a growing preference for AWS. “AT&T’s strategy seems solid compared to Verizon,” Townsend concluded. 

AT&T limits AWS to on-prem edge

AT&T announced a pair of deals with AWS in late 2016 and 2017 for network cloud, security, and IoT services, but the operator declined to provide updates on that effort today, further underlining its apparent shift to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud instead for edge services traversing its network. 

“We are not announcing anything with AWS at this time,” AT&T's Charles said. “AT&T will work with select cloud providers for on-premises computing on a case-by-case basis for different needs. A lot of it depends on our customer’s preferences and infrastructures.”

“I think it’s fair to say that AT&T is somewhat limiting itself, for now,” but there’s a natural expectation that AT&T might eventually offer its 5G connectivity in tandem with AWS’ edge, Filkins said. Similar developments are likely to unfold between AT&T and Microsoft, he added.

“Overall, the 5G MEC market remains in its infancy, lacking 5G devices and concrete use cases, outside some examples in manufacturing and a few other process automation driven use cases,” Filkins explained. “It’s OK to not be everything to everyone in this space right now.”

This, among other factors, puts AT&T and Verizon on almost equal footing, he added. “Verizon and AT&T have a lot more in common than they don’t in this area right now.”

Differentiation will be more abundant if operators frame their respective edge services around spectrum, security requirements, and edge availability zones, or define policies that determine which applications can be accessed locally or via a remote connection, according to Filkins. “It’s these details that will separate mobile operators as private cellular network uptake continues.”