Bridge Alliance, MobiledgeX, Singtel and Telefonica achieved an interconnection between two heterogenous multi-access edge computing (MEC) platforms as part of a GSMA Foundry Telco Edge Cloud trial.
Bridge Alliance is a group of mobile operators in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.
The hub-to-hub interconnection between the Bridge Alliance Federated Edge Hub (FEH) and MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud platform could allow edge applications to be deployed across different edge platforms and regions served by each hub.
Singtel’s MEC and Telefonica’s MEC are connected by FEH and MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud platform respectively. With the interconnection, Singtel’s customers will be able to deploy edge applications on Telefonica’s MEC and vice versa, enabling multi-market services delivery across an extended geographical footprint, including Asia and Europe. Customers, developers, and partners can discover, as well as order cross-regional edge resources and deploy applications through a unified interface, ensuring a uniform experience across different networks and markets in these regions. Previously, interconnections were performed between operators on a one-on-one basis, making it difficult to scale the edge coverage.
Dr Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, said, “We’re delighted to achieve this industry-first milestone with MobiledgeX and Telefonica. The implication of such hub-to-hub interconnections is that our member operators’ enterprise customers will be able to offer exciting data-intensive and low latency services in markets beyond our Asian footprint. We believe that this is only the beginning of more cross-regional edge deployments in the industry, which will occur as more of our member operators come on board our FEH, and as more trials between different edge hubs/aggregators are established. We welcome more edge hub partners on board.”
Michael Lochead, SVP of product for MobiledgeX said, “The true promise of edge computing hinges on seamless developer access for high-performance applications that can take advantage of global reach. Today’s announcement represents another major leap toward this goal, demonstrating that operators in disparate regions can choose the edge computing platform that best fits individual market needs while still easily achieving worldwide reach. We are proud to continue advancing edge compute possibilities with our operator partners as meaningful edge service rollouts are prepped for 2022 and beyond.”
