As more data processing moves to the network edge, towercos hope to host edge servers.
The edge of the network is the center of attention for analysts who track investments in IT infrastructure and software. International Data Corporation predicts a 5-year CAGR of 12.5 percent for spending on edge compute resources, swelling the value of the market from an estimated $140 billion before the pandemic, to $250 billion in 2024. The analysts at Forrester were projecting 50 percent growth in the edge cloud service market for 2020, even before the global pandemic radically changed network usage patterns.
COVID-19 drove a sharp increase in demand for bandwidth, compute and storage near the end users of network services. From robotic manufacturing to video streaming to AR gaming, activities that leverage edge computing were growing last year, and edge infrastructure grew with them.
Where are all of these edge servers deployed? Tower owners would like to see more of them at the bases of their structures, where fiber, power and mobile connectivity are readily available. A number of smaller companies stand ready to help, including Vapor IO, EdgeMicro and DartPoints. But these companies don’t deploy exclusively at tower sites, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that edge deployments follow fiber, first and foremost.
“The fiber piece of it is really critical to making the edge compute piece work,” said Crown Castle’s Paul Reddick. Reddick is Crown’s VP for strategy, business and product development, and he is also a board advisor to Vapor IO, one of the companies working to deploy edge compute infrastructure in metropolitan areas. Crown has made two separate investments in Vapor IO, first in 2017 and again in early 2020. Despite the fact that mini data centers did not appear at tower sites across the country as quickly as Vapor IO’s team may have hoped they would, Crown remains committed to the partnership, probably because the towerco has an extensive fiber footprint. “Our fiber is important to Vapor,” said Reddick. “Not all edge computing needs to be at a tower site.”
Indeed, one of Crown’s competitors reported that many of its 2020 edge server deployments did not leverage tower sites, but instead used other real estate that had access to fiber and proximity to end users. In 2019, an edge data center deployed at the base of an SBA tower was dubbed a “thoughtful failure” by Packet, the company that deployed the infrastructure. Access to power and fiber were less predictable than expected, and finding on-site technicians with the right skill sets proved challenging.
Nonetheless, tower locations are perfect for some edge compute use cases, Reddick said. Towers are always going to be convergence points for massive amounts of wireless data, so adding processing power close to that data makes sense. Over time, more and more wireless data will be coming from connected cameras, vehicles, and smart city infrastructure, and some of it will need to be processed at the edge. “Our towers are awesome locations for edge computing,” Reddick said.
Give me shelter
Reddick said that when Sprint decommissioned its iDEN network in 2013, Crown did not demolish the iDEN shelters at its towers. Now, those structures stand ready to house edge compute servers.
“With the right cooling, it works,” said Reddick. “And we have a lot of land – we can build a bigger shelter if we need to.”
Demand for edge servers at the bases of towers will evolve, Reddick predicts. He thinks that as carriers move to 5G and vRAN, they will be forced to invest more heavily in edge computing to support lower latencies and handle the processing required by vRAN. Over time, he foresees vRAN driving base stations away from towers, and bringing edge servers in. “You need an edge compute facility for every 10-30 towers,” he said. “A logical location is one of those towers.”
Veteran telecom industry editor and journalist Martha DeGrasse is an Inside Towers Contributing Analyst with features appearing twice per month. DeGrasse owns Network Builder Reports and contributes regularly to several publications. She was formerly a writer and editor with RCR Wireless and a TV business news producer.
By Martha DeGrasse, Inside Towers Contributing Analyst
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