Sophia Antipolis, 22 December 2015

MEC ISG celebrates first anniversary

One year after its first meeting, ETSI's Industry Specification Group on Mobile Edge Computing (ISG MEC) met at ETSI for its fifth meeting and announced three Proofs of Concept demonstrations. Mobile Edge Computing is considered a key technology for future 5G networks and the initiative gained momentum over the last year, with many articles and papers referring to Mobile Edge Computing and market intelligence reports on MEC from IDC, ABI and Gartner, for instance.

The ETSI ISG MEC has already published two specifications on service scenarios and a Proof of Concept (PoC) framework as well as a white paper. Three MEC Proofs of Concept have been developed to demonstrate the following scenarios:

Ongoing work in the ISG includes development of specifications on technical requirements and use cases, framework and reference architecture, MEC metrics best practice guidelines, business case examples, or market requirements for a multivendor ecosystem, demonstration kits and a tutorial. Early 2016 the group will start working on platform services, APIs and interfaces. The MEC APIs will be application-agnostic and will allow the smooth porting of value-creating applications on every mobile-edge server with guaranteed service level agreement (SLA).

Mobile Edge Computing complements NFV and SDN, helping to advance the transformation of mobile broadband networks into a programmable world and enables a myriad of new use cases, with fresh business opportunities. It provides a new hub where mobile operators and application/content providers can collaborate. MEC technology enables the transition towards 5G and is a key enabler for IoT and mission-critical vertical solutions.