Verizon is ready to deploy 5G nationwide whenever its top executives give the go ahead, according to Adam Koeppe, SVP of technology, architecture, strategy, and planning at Verizon.

That feat will primarily be achieved via software. Dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), which allows operators to use the same spectrum for 4G LTE and 5G on a demand-generated and automated basis, is being “put through the paces in the field right now,” he said during an investor conference. 

Verizon is leaning heavily on DSS to deploy a nationwide 5G footprint on low-band spectrum while it continues building a millimeter-wave (mmWave) footprint for 5G in more populated areas of the country. 

“When we feel that there’s a viable commercial need based on customer demand, handset availability, market conditions, whatever it is, we’re ready to flip the switch and provide a 5G nationwide experience,” Koeppe said. 

Verizon has repeatedly said it will have a nationwide 5G footprint by the end of the year, but whenever that happens it will be the last of the large domestic operators to deploy 5G at scale. T-Mobile US activated its nationwide 5G network running on low-band spectrum in December 2019, and AT&T reached nationwide coverage on its 5G network last month. 

While that first-to-market advantage slipped away, Verizon has been assembling what it considers to be the preeminent mobile edge computing platform in the country with Amazon Web Services. Verizon Edge paired with AWS’ Wavelength edge compute service went live last week in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area, and it plans to have the service available in 10 markets by the end of the year.

“Edge can have a lot of different definitions based on what you’re doing but our plan has been the same. So our edge compute strategy allows us to actually be pretty flexible with where we deploy resources,” Koeppe said.

“Think of edge compute as a function that you can put at any part in your network based on the latency needs that you’re trying to meet,” he added. For Verizon that means installing edge compute resources in about 55 signaling access points (SAP) throughout the country during the next couple years, in tandem with efforts to push those resources to a central office, a fiber points of presence (PoP), or a cloud radio access network (RAN) hub location to decrease latency on that particular part of the network, Koeppe explained.

“Edge compute is actually meant to be agile positioned to the network based on the use case you’re trying to meet and all of those locations become fair game, if you will, for edge compute resources.”

Those locations are meaningful because Verizon has distributed real estate around the country where it can install edge compute equipment and “create these edge compute zones that are then available to all of the cell sites and endpoints” connected to each SAP, he said. 

“We talk about edge compute being placed in our own locations, and our distributed architecture is an enabler for those resources to be put in locations that we own and operate.”

With edge computing still in relatively infancy it’s unclear the extent to which hyperscalers will pursue partnerships with network operators when AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and others could feasibly build neutral host edge locations to sell at large. 

Koeppe declined to comment further on the structure of Verizon’s relationship with AWS, but said the operator is determined to show AWS that “this is the best possible partnership that they can have in this business. What they choose to do beyond that is their call, obviously.”

The goal of the partnership, which was announced in December following 18 months of work behind the scenes, is to simplify the developer experience so AWS’ developer community can put apps that require low latency services on Verizon’s network, Koeppe explained.

Operators’ growing interest in edge computing is to be expected after significant investments were made to build 5G networks, Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, told SDxCentral earlier this week. “[Carriers] want to start monetizing it and they don’t have the necessary wherewithal to essentially drive the bits to that highway because the bits are really the applications, and applications are running in the cloud today,” he said.

As Verizon prepares to activate a nationwide 5G footprint, foundational technologies like edge computing and IoT are gaining momentum with multiple cloud providers. The operator has been particularly busy on the IoT front of late, including the integration of its ThingSpace IoT platform with Microsoft Azure IoT Central (it already had a similar deal in place with AWS), a deal with IBM to begin selling IoT services to enterprises, and a pilot with Google Cloud to test artificial intelligence (AI) driven services for customer service. 

Verizon also recently completed an end-to-end data session on its standalone (SA) 5G core with network traffic slated to start hitting the new core before the end of the year. But again, with full commercialization of its SA 5G core not occurring until 2021, Verizon is trailing its competitors. T-Mobile US last week turned on the world’s first SA 5G network operating on a 5G core and AT&T previously said it would deploy 5G in standalone mode this year but hasn’t provided any recent updates on that effort.

Verizon also declined to name any vendors involved in its SA 5G core following last month’s shocking report about the operator’s plans to end its relationship with Nokia and award Samsung roughly half of its RAN contract going forward.