T-Mobile US’ Business gained a pair of new features targeted at bolstering its Advanced Network Solution (ANS) portfolio, with one focused on edge connectivity and the other on providing easier management of the carrier’s ANS products.

Edge Control is the connectivity piece, which is taking advantage of T-Mobile US’ 5G-Advanced network to support edge deployments. This includes local breakout for lower latency and to handle complex network data routing needs.

T-Mobile for Business Chief Marketing Officer Mo Katibeh explained to SDxCentral that the Edge Control product provides “private network-like performance minus the overhead, which think of that as really lower total cost of ownership for the enterprise.”

Specifically, the service moves the user plane functions (UPFs) from the core of the network out to the network edge. This allows the service to support network on- and off-ramps at those edge locations to more efficiently route local traffic and provide what Katibeh said is, “true data sovereignty anywhere on the T-Mobile 5G-Advanced network without traversing the public internet and VPN tunnels.”

Deployment consists of what Katibeh called an “edge unit, … which does the traffic breakout and routing.” That device is agnostic to any underlying hyperscaler connectivity an enterprise might use or the local environment in terms of server equipment on site.

This also differentiates the product from mobile edge compute (MEC) platforms that are designed to bring data processing closer to end-user environments.

“Edge Control, on the other hand, is a network enabler for MEC,” Katibeh explained. “So it allows the customer to say, ‘hey, when I'm looking at my cellular data traffic, I want to break out parts of that to be locally available and flow directly into an enterprise's MEC environment versus other traffic. … In other words, Edge Control makes MEC faster, more secure, more efficient by optimizing how that data is routed to and from the edge.”

T-Mobile US rival Verizon has been a long-time proponent of MEC, having struck deals with hyperscalers to support services. However, MEC adoption has languished, and Verizon’s ongoing support of those services could be impacted by the recent and sudden removal of CEO Hans Vestberg, who was a strong backer of that initiative.

What about control?

T-Mobile US also unveiled its T-Platform, which provides a centralized control portal over the carrier’s business services. This includes the Edge Control platform, its ANS services, business internet security offerings, IoT devices, wireless connectivity, and collaboration tools.

“Think of T-Platform as the single pane of glass” for service management, Katibeh said.

The service includes a free tier that provides organizational-level visibility across all products and services that a customer has purchased, and a paid “advanced tier” that delivers expanded capabilities, including line and device visibility, and enhanced control features.

Katibeh said the carrier has already been testing T-Platform and has “actually onboarded tens of thousands of existing T-Mobile for Business customers into the platform. We're monitoring active users, daily, monthly, like all the standard metrics that you would but we're seeing very strong engagement with the product.”

T-Mobile US ANS positioning

T-Mobile US unveiled its ANS suite in mid-2022, positioning it as a selection of 5G network and edge services targeted at enterprise and government customers. It included a trio of initial components, including the Public Network, Hybrid Mobile Network, and Private Mobile Network. That initial launch also included work with vendor partners Ericsson, Nokia, and Dell Technologies.

Mishka Dehghan, SVP for strategy, product, and solutions engineering at T-Mobile US’ Business Group, explained to SDxCentral last year that the ANS launch underscored T-Mobile US’ different view of the market compared to rivals.

“Where others were really seeing the combination of MEC and private network working together, we didn't see that,” Dehghan said. “We took our time in terms of launching a portfolio of solutions. For us it was really around purpose-built connectivity for customers that will give them the flexibility to adopt the type of solution that's best for the outcome that they're trying to achieve. So that's why we said, ‘hey, we're going to have the fully private, the hybrid, and also just leverage our macro network,’ which, quite frankly, is so robust that often time you don't need to have a fully private network to run the type of use cases. And whether the customer decides to run some mobile edge computing on site, where the action is, where the data is, they can leverage that purpose-built connectivity to do so.”

Broader T-Mobile US changes

The latest ANS updates also come under the shadow of leadership changes and a broader market focus at T-Mobile US.

Long-time business head Callie Field left the company at the end of September, having spent nearly 22 years at the carrier. Field started as a sales representative and was eventually named president of T-Mobile Business Group.

Field was replaced by former Deutsche Telekom (DT) financial executive André Almeida. Almeida had been a member of T-Mobile US’ board of directors since mid-2023, having previously served in various financial roles at DT, which is a majority owner of T-Mobile US.

T-Mobile US recently signed a deal with cable providers Comcast and Charter Communications that provides them access to T-Mobile US’ wireless network through a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) model targeted at the small- and mid-sized (SMB) enterprise market segment.

T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert had explained that this market includes enterprises with less than 1,000 wireless lines and is a segment T-Mobile US has “little exposure today.”

“The deal focuses our partners in the exact areas that would drive incremental revenue, because our strongest T-Mobile-branded growth comes, on the one hand, from the very smallest businesses transacting at retail, where we already compete with cable, and on the other hand from large enterprises above 1,000 lines, which are not included in the deal,” Sievert said. “So while it's going to take some time for this to grow into something meaningful, I'm super excited about their capabilities to generate growth in the SMB sector in a way that will be truly incremental for T-Mobile.”

Sievert is set to step down from his CEO role on November 1 and will be replaced by current COO Srini Gopalan. Sievert had been CEO since 2020, taking that role the day T-Mobile US closed on its $26 billion acquisition of rival Sprint.

Gopalan, who previously headed DT's Germany business, moved to the U.S. division earlier this year. Gopalan will now head an organization fresh off acquiring smaller U.S. rival UScellular, and getting involved in a pair of fiber ventures with the acquisitions of Lumos and Metronet.