Vapor IO, the Austin, TX-headquartered developer of the Kinetic Grid platform that delivers edge and grid services, has teamed up with Barcelona, Spain-based Cellnex Telecom, the leading European tower company, to expand the Kinetic Grid to Europe. The first deployment in Barcelona will connect to the 36 U.S. cities already served by Vapor IO. Over the next several years, Vapor IO’s edge grid is expected to expand utilizing Cellnex’ extensive digital infrastructure across the 12 European countries in which Cellnex operates.
This collaboration is intended to improve the delivery of new, monetizable services by reducing data traffic towards the core of the wireless and fiber networks. The Kinetic Grid platform enhances data sovereignty and enables the development of stable, low latency services such as real-time computer vision for public safety, smart retail, industrial robotics, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, and online gaming. Moreover, the project will enable the efficient deployment of virtualized radio access network technology, either OpenRAN or vRAN, that European MNOs are planning.
Cellnex is making available a portfolio of small edge data centers and tower ground space for hosting the necessary edge computing equipment. Several fiber routes, provided by Cellnex and/or Cellnex´s MNO customers, will interconnect these edge data centers creating a “grid” of edge nodes.
The Kinetic Grid platform delivers next generation internet and communications capabilities to metropolitan regions. Kinetic Grid provides networking and automation software that enable micro modular data centers, software defined networks and hyperscale backbones to operate autonomously in highly distributed edge locations such as cell tower sites and edge data centers.
Vapor IO serves global MNOs, cloud providers, web-scale companies and innovative enterprises. Its Kinetic Grid combines neutral, multi-tenant colocation with software-defined interconnection and high-speed networking. The platform can deliver flexible, highly distributed internet and communications infrastructure at the edge of both wired and wireless networks.
“Cellnex is delighted to enable Vapor IO’s neutral host Kinetic Grid to Europe, starting in Barcelona,” says Eduardo Fichmann, Global Director of Innovation and Product Strategy at Cellnex. “We invite our anchor tenants and global telecom service providers to leverage this partnership to virtualize the computing infrastructure in such a way that it will allow the federation and optimization of the use of computing resources and of the network itself by third-party applications on a neutral host model.”
Fichmann notes, “This agreement with Vapor IO strengthens Cellnex’s strategy of leveraging infrastructure in locations co-located with operator equipment at the towers or edge data centers, that will give rise to organic revenue growth for the company.”
Cole Crawford, Vapor IO Founder and CEO, adds, “Vapor IO and Cellnex share a common commitment to neutral host infrastructure. Vapor IO’s Kinetic Grid is both cloud-neutral and carrier-neutral, meaning it is one of the few locations at the edge where both carriers and clouds can meet on equal terms.”
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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