This approach would be a low risk for the operator, as the infrastructure is only built when required. The telecom company acts as an enabler of edge computing, hosting the computing and storage hardware already connected to the network. The customer or partner would run its own software on the MEC. One such example would be a virtual Content Distribution Network (CDN) model: The CDN service providers use the dedicated edge hosting to facilitate very fast delivery of content owned by the likes of Netflix, HBO and YouTube to end consumers. The predicted growth in connected and even autonomous vehicles in coming years would see the computing resources of dedicated edge hosting also being sold to car manufacturers, who offer services to car owners.

In this business model, the telecoms company acts in the same way as a cloud provider, providing distributed storage and computing capabilities; a platform for developing applications on the edge infrastructure, and network services in an ‘as a service’ manner through a cloud portal as the customer interface. The big difference to dedicated edge hosting for the network operator, is that there are no guaranteed customers beforehand. There is a higher risk for the telecoms company as it needs to invest in MEC coverage and widely deploy the edge infrastructure up front, before a revenue stream is established. This model is more scalable however, and there is the possibility of a larger ongoing revenue stream, assuming sufficient adoption among customers. Customers might be IoT application providers who want to optimise applications so that they can analyse the data from devices to trigger actions quickly. Other potential customers include large enterprises, systems integrators, CDN providers, content owners and other cloud providers.

This business model would offer custom turnkey solutions for enterprise customers with specific requirements, some of which are met by MEC functionality. An example would be a city or local council investing in a MEC solution for their smart city project which would require deployment of the MEC infrastructure and any necessary hardware (sensors, actuators and devices), integration of different networks and systems, and orchestrating the development of the smart city solutions and applications. This model would not require significant investment from the network operator as the MEC infrastructure would be under written by the customers.

More of an ‘off -the-shelf’ product than the systems integration model above, the telecoms company may offer MEC-enabled business solutions for government, enterprise or SME customers. This may be to improve existing processes, or to contribute to an end customer offering (B2B2X). These offerings would require significantly less integration work than systems integrati on projects. A good example would be a service for large events with significant risk of network congestion (sports stadiums, music concerts) to enhance the attendees’ experience using MEC to provide immersive low-latency video, or live video streams from dif erent viewpoints. This can be monetised and off ered as an additional paid service for attendees. Another model would be CCTV video surveillance. Transmitting all CCTV feeds for central processing is uneconomical, but footage could be analysed on the edge, and only events deemed important enough would trigger notifications to CCTV operators and send the feeds to the cloud for further analysis. Recurring revenues in this instance might be a service fee for each connected camera. The risks associated with this business model are mainly due to the upfront service development and the uncertain take up of the solution by enterprise customers

In this model, the telecoms operator acts as a digital service provider for consumer applications. Applications in this category will leverage the benefits of MEC, like low latency, high throughput and context awareness, to provide consumers with innovative applications. These could be Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), or Virtual Reality (VR) applications that require video transmission in real time, like live sport or gaming. There is potentially high revenue in this business model, but significant investment would be needed to extend an existing content offering.