I tend to agree, we’re putting our own compute under 1ms from every cell tower in every metro. What that means is 3 or 6 DCs in a big metro area, but not usually compute in towers. Other edge compute is interesting tho. And the towers themselves are changing. We still have macro sites, but we will more than double the cell site count (400k to 1.2m) in the next 5 years and it will be small cells/DAS mostly. Those aren’t towers in the conventional sense. -Ben. -Ben Cannon CEO 6x7 Networks & 6x7 Telecom, LLC ben@6by7.net <mailto:ben@6by7.net>
On Jan 2, 2020, at 6:09 AM, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
I know there are a couple companies doing it, but compute at the tower isn't going to go anywhere. It makes very little sense to put it at the tower when you can put it in one location per metro area.
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com <http://www.ics-il.com/>
Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
From: "Brandon Butterworth" <brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk> To: jdambrosia@gmail.com Cc: "North American Network Operators Group" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 1, 2020 9:35:15 AM Subject: Re: 5G roadblock: labor
On Wed Jan 01, 2020 at 09:29:20AM -0500, jdambrosia@gmail.com wrote:
Given the deployment of Wi-Fi into so many different applications - your statement that 5G is to "replace" WiFi seems overly ambitious
We might think that but it is serious. They want to own it all and there is a small cabal of operators owning the spectrum so little room for new competitors.
Here's a project we did exploring some of the ambition https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2019-02-5g-mobile-augmented-reality-bath
Previously we avoided the old Telco CDNs by sticking to regular Internet CDNs and building our own but edge compute (mobile CDN but a better name to compete with AWS) is more insidious as you may not be able to get the same result from CDNs out on the net.
Either the content providers or the external CDNs they use will have to pay to use the mobile CDN. How they will scale that at all those sites will be interesting to see.
Perhaps preventing WiFi from further penetration is a better way to look at it?
If the mobile companies are providing the WiFi routers they can control it (see LTE WiFi attempt) and one day replace it with 5G or 6G in all the things. If they make a better job of it than everyones devices fighting for 5GHz then they may succeed.
brandon