AT&T and Microsoft improved network performance by upwards of 50% by deploying Microsoft’s cloud services at the edge of the network — a test that makes the business case for AT&T’s 5G network, said Ofer HaCohen, director of AT&T Foundry in Israel.

“It opens up so many opportunities and use cases,” HaCohen said. “From a Foundry perspective, one of our key missions is to create synergy and drive innovation by working very closely with the ecosystem around 5G and edge, and to see how these new, cutting-edge technologies can be leveraged to create business value and benefit to our customers.”

AT&T and Microsoft started working together earlier this year on a test to use Microsoft Azure to bring network edge compute (NEC) capabilities into the AT&T 5G network. The goal was to reduce latency and improve network performance by deploying cloud services closer to end users.

To do this, AT&T set up a NEC environment at the AT&T Cloud Foundry in Plano, Texas. It also worked with the AT&T Foundry in Israel to test the network with a drone monitoring startup, Vorpal, which is based in Israel. The test used four drones and ran Vorpal’s drone detection and tracking application using Azure cloud services delivered through the Plano AT&T test environment.

“The discussion was: what if we can take more compute that is at the edge of the network with low latency and bandwidth, and how can we enhance their business? We saw this vast uplift in performance that they can benefit from, specifically in an area — drone monitoring — where low-latency is needed for near real-time monitoring,” HaCohen said.

The NEC environment saw a 40% to 50% network performance improvement compared to testing in the public cloud, and speed tests showed 24 to 40 milliseconds of latency. It also showed low variance in latency, which is important to Vorpal’s ability to provide consistent quality of service in its sensors.

HaCohen said AT&T and Microsoft will continue working with Vorpal and other startups to test new use cases for Microsoft’s cloud services and AT&T’s network. “This is just the tip of the spear,” he said. “There’s so much more that can be done, and the more use cases that we create the more customers can see how they can take advantage of these new technologies.”