U.K.-based telecom giant Vodafone is expanding its work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Spain, providing enterprise customers in that country with access to low-latency services using the AWS Wavelength multi-access edge compute (MEC) platform.

The expansion provides Wavelength Zone availability to portions of Spain, including customers in Malaga, Granada, Córdoba, Jaén, Almería and areas of Seville. Initial use cases are using Vodafone’s Safer Transport for European Platform (STEP) that connects vehicles with transport authorities to relay information on road hazards, the location of highway maintenance workers and control of smart traffic lights.

Vodafone will also test a distributed Wavelength-powered MEC platform to support extended reality (XR) for agriculture, logistics, industry, entertainment and social health verticals. This XR platform will provide a 3D digital twin of applications the removes the need for a physical site visit.

AWS initially announced its Wavelength service at its annual re:Invent show in 2019. The platform includes compute and storage services deployed at carrier edge locations and are targeted at allowing the deployment of low-latency services.

It works alongside the hyperscaler’s Local Zones, which are an extension of its different cloud regions, and its Outposts platform that brings native AWS services, infrastructure and operating models to a data center, co-location space or on-premises facility.

AWS has more than 30 open Local Zones around the world, with around 20 more announced. Ishwar Parulkar, CTO for telecom and edge at AWS, recently told SDxCentral that its Outpost platform was supporting more than 200 Private 5G deployments.

This adds to what Jan Hofmeyr, VP for Amazon EC2, told SDxCentral is the vendor’s goal is “to make AWS the best place to run 5G networks.”

“That is the overarching objective,” Hofmeyr said during AWS’ re:Invent 2022 conference. “How can I make AWS, whether we are running it in the region, in a Local Zone, on an Outposts, on a Snow device, how do we make it the best place to run a 5G network, and then provide that infrastructure.”

Vodafone continues Wavelength ride

Vodafone got in on the Wavelength wave initially through a deployment in London in 2021. It soon expanded that reach to Germany and then added a second location in the U.K.

Verizon was the initial Wavelength partner, which it has expanded to more than 20 locations across the U.S. The carrier has said at least 75% of the U.S. population is now within 150 miles of its Wavelength Zones.

AWS has since scored Wavelength deals with Bell Canada and SK Telecom. Most recently it expanded its depth in the U.K. by scoring a deal with BT that will see that telecom operator invest multi-millions of dollars to combine the Wavelength platform running on BT’s EE 5G and 4G LTE mobile infrastructure in the U.K.

Stagnating MEC market

Despite the traction, analysts have started to cut expectations for the MEC market.

Dell’Oro Group recently said it expects the market to come in more than 20% lower than previously forecast for 2023. Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, wrote that the shortfall was tied to MEC being overshadowed by an initial operator focus on private network deployments, a lack of applications with “well-defined return on investment,” an initial overabundance of potential providers in the space, including hyperscalers and possible technology overlap with connection services like Wi-Fi.

“We believe enterprises are evaluating all of these choices before moving forward with more aggressive MEC deployments,” Bolan wrote. “As a result, we are lowering the MEC forecast for 2023 by more than 20% from our previous forecast.”

In an interview with SDxCentral, Bolan explained that private networks are driving the market, backed by government efforts to free up specific spectrum bands to support deployments. This includes work in the United States tied to the Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum that is core to initial private network deployments.

“There’s been a lot of emphasis there, but the work that’s done there could be leveraged in use cases that develop into what we call MEC, which is an extension of mobile private network, the way we define it,” Bolan said.

A bigger challenge is in crafting a financially viable use case.

For operators, Bolan said they should look toward services like high-bandwidth IoT devices that are leveraging video and computer vision. He explained this includes devices or equipment with embedded cameras that can track or transmit data in real time over a high-speed, low-latency private 5G network to an on-premises cloud service that can tap into machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in support of enterprise application and services.

Bolan added that he was still tweaking exactly how much lower the MEC market will come in this year versus expectations, but that he’ll “definitely be lowering it."

CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to remove Dish Network as a current Wavelength customer.