The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is making progress in defining mobile edge computing integration standards, but the extent to which operators, developers, and cloud providers will embrace common interfaces is very much an open question. 

ETSI’s multi-access edge computing group published a new report that outlines the benefits of standard frameworks for network functions, traffic routing, and user plane functions in a 5G network, aligning its efforts with the 3GPP-defined Common API Framework. The group of more than 110 members got its start in mid 2018 and recently extended its efforts for another two years, indicating a lack of widespread adoption and the difficult challenges that remain unresolved.

The standards body is focusing its efforts on operator requirements and anticipated use cases, but the spread of edge computing in 5G networks is also heavily dependent on support from cloud providers and application developers, explained Sami Kekki, vice chair of the group and an expert at Huawei Technologies based in Finland.

“In a way this has been like a series of disappointments the past five years. We have wanted to be more optimistic about operators’ deployments, how the telcos will deploy the edge, but things have happened more slowly,” he said. 

Mobile edge computing is fragmented because cloud providers, operators, and vendors are increasingly striking partnerships and approaching the opportunity from their own vantage points and for their respective interests, Kekki added.

Various mobile edge computing partnerships between operators and cloud giants mean that both see ample opportunity, but the lack of common APIs is effectively creating one-off or cloud-specific instances of mobile edge computing networks that don’t interoperate or integrate with competing networks, according to Kekki.

“It has not been easy so far to convince those people and companies to use those APIs because there is often some alternative way and maybe they think that the alternative way is easier or cheaper,” he said. However, he argues that ETSI and 3GPP’s coordinated efforts to publish standards during the interim has highlighted the benefits of operating mobile edge computing under a well defined and common API.

“It’s then up to them, and we need to of course be ready to accept any outcome but at least we still believe that there is some value that is really not only to the operators but really to the application developers,” Kekki said, adding that buy-in from application developers could trigger more support and standards-driven interactions with hyperscalers. 

“There is, in a way, two alternatives: they make their own versions of these attractive things or they decide to adopt what we have done,” he said. “It’s still a big question mark that how much of what ETSI has developed will be deployed there.”

Adapting to standards is a difficult task for hyperscalers, and that’s understandable because the cloud giants have very competitive offerings, but there is also space for APIs from various groups and providers to be implemented in a more integrated fashion, according to Kekki. APIs from hyperscalers, 3GPP, ETSI, and open source projects “are all in the same toolbox,” he said. 

“We can define these edge clouds to interoperate and allow the management systems of these operators to somehow coordinate that one operator can actually provide some of their services in their competitor’s network and so on,” Kekki said.

That vision, however, remains unrealized. Many edge computing vendors can’t even agree on the definition of edge computing. Operators in the U.S. and abroad have struck seemingly competing, and non-cooperative contracts for mobile edge computing on their 5G networks with multiple cloud providers, oftentimes with each platform serving a different audience.

Operators in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. have all established separate mobile edge computing alliances. Interest in the market is spreading like wildfire, but relatively few companies have built a sustainable business and an integrated effort that groups like ETSI are pushing for has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, cloud providers, network operators, radio access network vendors, and colocation data centers have all pushed competing vehicles and pathways to the mobile edge.

Kekki argues that mobile operators and other parties invested in mobile edge computing should embrace the same principles that have been applied to network roaming for decades.

“If every operator is just deploying their edge computing in whichever way they like using some hyperscaler, one is using this and the other is using that, the interworking is probably a nightmare, so there we see an opportunity. … You need to agree how you do things otherwise your systems won’t talk to each other,” Kekki concluded.