5G service providers are now in an important position. They can increase revenues from the enterprise market by offering premium services and performance with guaranteed SLAs – and as a new Dell’Oro Group whitepaper notes, one of the key features enabling this is multi-access edge computing (MEC).
The paper, ‘How 5G Service Providers Can Capitalise on the Wireless Enterprise Market Opportunity’, defines MEC in two ways: public and private. Public MEC ‘is a service available to all subscribers’ and can be classified as either B2B or B2C. Private MEC is B2B with ‘specific MEC services on-premises, such as at enterprise campuses and factories.’
Dell’Oro Group proffers seven sectors in total which can benefit from 5G-enabled MEC. Many are based around smart infrastructure – manufacturing, health, smart cities and smart grid – alongside connected automotive, cloud-based virtual and augmented reality, and drones.
For providers of 5G networks, they can meet the needs of enterprises requiring real-time – or near-real-time – communications with three potential architectural options:
- 5G PNI-NPN (public network integrated non-public network) with public MEC
- 5G PNI-NPN with private MEC
- 5G SNPN (standalone NPN) with private 5G core
Dell’Oro Group identified seven important network characteristics for enterprises. These range from the nuts and bolts of coverage, spectrum and network access, to the identifiable use cases for edge around latency and data sovereignty.
“The enterprise wireless real-time and near real-time communications market is an undeniably large opportunity for 5G service providers to grow their revenues,” the report concluded. “5G MEC is the enabling technology to meet low latency requirements, as well as data sovereignty when required.”
You can read the full whitepaper here.
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