BT and Telefónica demonstrate the aggregation capability of the Telco Edge Cloud

Tuesday 6 Apr 2021 | 5G Video Series | Resources | TEC partner spotlight | Telco Edge | Telco Edge Cloud |

The GSMA Telco Edge Cloud (TEC), is a global initiative to expose, manage and market Edge Computing resources and capabilities across different networks and national boundaries based on a combination of open technologies and telco standards. The Telco Edge Cloud represents a complementary value proposition providing features intrinsic to operators that enhance cloud-native runtime environments with smart edge application instantiation, smart edge discovery, mobility management, aggregation & federation and support for roaming users in a multi-operator environment.

Under the umbrella of the GSMA Telco Edge Cloud, BT and Telefónica have collaborated to run a multi-operator and multi-location trial using the MobiledgeX platform running on top of edge infrastructure provided by the participating operators. The ultimate objective is to demonstrate that for an application developer such as Unmanned Life, it is possible to launch the same app onto multiple TEC environments, provided by different operators, using a common aggregation platform solution such as the one being defined by the GSMA Operator Platform Ground. In this case, Unmanned Life’s drone orchestration app is being deployed on top.

The use case of this trial is based on autonomous drone swarm management, machine learning and image recognition, implementing an emergency response use case. The use case simulated for the demonstration represents an emergency response scenario during which autonomous search and rescue drones are deployed as an integrated workforce.

The demo was recently showcased in the Telefonica headquarters in Madrid, on a small scale, but containing all the building blocks required to deploy the full-scale solution, which will be run in BT in the near future.

The video shows more about the TEC workstream and the drone orchestration trial over BT and Telefonica’s Telco Edge Clouds.

The GSMA is coordinating the execution and promotion of Telco Edge Cloud pre-commercial trials in 2021, in its new Foundry initiative. If you are interested in joining, please get in touch with Future Networks.