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



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

Midwest-IX
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