Wikipedia edits Cloud & Edge computing

I began the process of updating and clarifying the first paragraphs of these articles. Improvements welcome.

Cloud computing makes computer system resources, especially storage and computing power, available on demand without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet. Large clouds, predominant today, often have functions distributed over multiple locations from central servers. If the connection to the user is relatively close, it may be designated an Edge server.

Clouds may be limited to a single organization (enterprise clouds,) be available to many organizations (public cloud,) or a combination of both (hybrid cloud.) The largest public cloud is Amazon AWS.

Edge computing brings memory and computing power closer to the location where it is needed. Definitions vary.

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Verizon freezes 5G for 6-10 months

Except for a very few people in small parts of 4 cities (map at left and at PC Mag,)Mag,) Verizon will not sell you 5G until they get NR certified equipment. They are looking to Motorola and Samsung, who are both six months and more away from volume production.

After spending untold millions to be "first," Verizon has stopped opening 5G sites to customers. Hans Vestberg decided to wait until he could get 3GPP approved NR routers rather than those custom-built to Verizon's early standard. 

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Ericsson 4G LTE: 2 gigabits, 10 ms latency

As previously reported, Ericsson is bringing the 4G latency close to 5G latency. In March, the company emailed me,

From mid-2018 Ericsson will have support for latency (Round Trip Time, RTT) down to 9ms on the LTE air interface (Based on the 3GPP Rel-14).

Verizon and others are being coy, but the reported latencies on 5G are also ~10 ms. 

On speed, Ericsson now offers multi-Gigabit LTE for 2Gbps. This is consistent with previous reports. See 4G LTE: Telstra 2 gigabits, Singtel 1.5, Verizon 1.45. 5G NR low and mid-band will be slightly faster one day, but today is slower in practice since 5G doesn't have functions like LAA. 

Below, the press release. It speaks of Massive IoT. I'll ask Ericsson for more info.

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10-15 ms servers deploying from Vapor IO

1 ms 5G is years away but the first 10-15 ms Edge Clouds are sprouting up. A day after I said, "No one is deploying Edge at the cell sites," I discovered Vapor IO is deploying systems one hop away or sometimes at towers. Update: Vapor tells Mike Dano "Vapor IO is putting its edge computing functions," where they can "manage hundreds or potentially thousands of cell radios." Previously, they planned the opposite. At a guess, the difference is 3-8 ms. Apologies for my sloppy fact-checking. End update.

The first two are live in Chicago and they building over a dozen more. After four years and three funding rounds, they plan to launch 200 sites by the end of 2020. Goldman Sachs, Crown Castle, and private equity have been involved.  

AT&T and T-Mobile/Nokia are rebuilding their networks for SDN/NFV and both are using OpenStack. Vapor IO has an interesting multitenant software system that provides a shared system (colocation.) CMO Matt Trifiro tells me they are actively signing clients. Part-owner Crown Castle has 10's of thousands of small cell and towers. It would be natural to do joint sales calls.

Trifiro tells me the Vapor Edge Modules will also go at "aggregation points" one hop away. With dedicated fibre, that may add as little as a millisecond.  (Update. This is not accurate,)

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China 5G: 172,000 in 2019, 5M next 6 years (Nomura)

The three Chinese giants expect to install 172,000 base stations in 2019. That's more than the entire networks of Verizon & AT&T, combined. Officially, this is "non-commercial." It probably will be more than twice the entire rest of the world.

Under the direction of Minister Miao Wei, one of the best regulators in the world, the Chinese will be building 5G and edge clouds at an (almost) unbelievable pace. China Tower, owned by the three companies, is talking about bringing 5G to two million sites by 2022-2023.

That would mean 5G - and ~20 ms edge clouds will reach 70+% of China within four years, hundreds of millions of homes. 

Huawei and ZTE will probably get a third of the orders each. That likely means they will be making more base stations than anyone else. Datang, now controlled by Fiberhome, is also hopeful.

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5,500 5G base stations at LG Korea

Real numbers are starting to trickle out. LG Uplus, Korea's #3, intends to "complete all major cities" in 2019. Korea's three telcos nominally went live in December, but are only accepting a handful of business customers.  They expect 5G phones from Samsung & LG in March.

The other Korean telcos, KT & SKT, have a total of 3,000 bases deployed. All three are taking steps to fill their networks. LG is funding Korean game and VR companies. SKT is working with Seoul for an advanced traffic information system.

The Koreans have only discussed mid-band 3.5 MHz frequencies. Samsung and KT were pioneers in millimetre wave and I hear rumors. But I have no confirmation.

China will deploy 170,000 5G bases in 2019, Nomura reports. (I'm factchecking.) The Chinese also choose mid-band, including over 100 MHz to China Mobile at 2.5 GHz. CM also received some 4.9 GHz spectrum, which is used for Wi-Fi in the West.

?5G Phones $80 for additional parts (Cheap)

A report in Digitimes suggests premium 5G phones will cost about US$100 more than comparable 

The production cost for 5G phones as compared to their 4G predecessors should increase by less than US$80 per unit, including an increase by almost US$50 for 5G modem chips and application processors, and the remaining US$30 for new antennas, PCBs and other materials, the sources indicated.

Digitimes stories like this have usually been accurate in the past. This is much less than the US$200 additional estimated by OPPO CEO Pete Lau.  

Dan Adams of Deloitte estimates about a million 5G phones will ship in 2019.

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AR/VR/XR: What to expect from networks the next four years

Latency, clouds, and how the telcos hope to take over

The 1 ms latency frequently touted will be available to less than 2%, probably much less. 300-600 million homes will be able to connect at 15-25 ms through carrier edge cloud networks. Most will be in China. (This and the other predictions are well-researched but of course not guaranteed.)

Deutsche Telekom is rapidly building a network to connect all Germans to servers within 20-25 milliseconds. Multi-player Pokemon has a great demo. DT is working with rivals. Timotheus Höttges and team have decided a project like this needs to reach the largest audience and are including rivals. 

Carriers have monopolies on reaching their own customers. Many expect to charge a high price to use their edge clouds, which will be 10 ms to 30 ms faster than other choices such as CDNs. It is totally unclear whether the market for that kind of service will be large. I am more sceptical than most but very unsure.

They are already making deals, such as China Unicom with Tencent. Verizon is building game servers. The partnerships are logical, if and only if the terms work.

Telcos dream of a wireless umbilical cord between your phone or autonomous car and their servers

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