Some of the largest operators in Europe, Asia, and Australia have joined forces to advance and collaborate on the development of multi-access edge computing. The initiative falls under the umbrella of the GSMA’s recently announced Operator Platform, which led to the creation of yet another multi-carrier partnership seeking to develop an interoperable edge computing platform.

The Multi-Operator Multi-access Edge Computing Experience is a joint agreement including Telefónica, China Unicom, KT. Corp, and Telstra. It’s unclear the extent to which that group’s efforts will overlap with the Telco Edge Cloud, which includes support from China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, Orange, Singtel, SK Telecom, Telefónica, and TIM.

Indeed, as mobile edge computing (MEC) takes hold in networks around the world, multiple overlapping and seemingly redundant alliances are bubbling up to the surface. 

A group of Asian operators, including SK Telecom, Singtel, Globe, Taiwan Mobile, and PCCW Global, formed the Global MEC Task Force in January to work toward international MEC standards to support interoperability across carriers. Days later Verizon, with an assist from América Móvil, KT, Rogers, Telstra, and Vodafone, formed the 5G Future Forum to develop interoperable 5G specifications for developers and operators.

The four-way collaboration between Telefónica, KT, China Unicom, and Telstra, will initially focus on the provisioning and delivery of edge services that can drive revenue across interconnected platforms. The group says it will later focus on mobility features, roaming, and applications that can be delivered “across a federation of interconnected operators.”

The confluence of multiple collaborative efforts on mobile edge computing underlines the challenges that operators face as they seek out new use cases and business models. Carriers and their potential customers are still working through how those services might be packaged and sold.

Efforts to standardize multi-access edge computing are also underway at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, which is working to define the architecture, framework, and general principles for service APIs. ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing Industry Specifications Group also released a pair of reports that identify additional support required when MEC applications run on containers and the impact of alternative virtualization technologies.

Meanwhile, MEF is eyeing opportunities to create deeper integration between the edge and cloud to facilitate the delivery of MEF 3.0 services on 5G this year. During a keynote at MEF 2019, the forum’s CTO Pascal Menezes described edge computing as a dispersion or distribution of the cloud, and said latency is the driving force of this evolution. 

Edge computing is a growing area of interest for network operators and momentum is shifting to the technology as 5G proliferates in their respective networks, but these efforts differ in strategy and implementation. The various alliances and task forces being formed to address these challenges could create some semblance of interoperable standards but operators are still just as likely to carve out their own niche approaches to edge computing to bolster their respective offerings.