KDDI, Deutsche Telekom, MobiledgeX, Sturfee and Mawari have jointly developed a proof of concept to test PaaS for XR applications development provided as a common platform on MEC provided by each telecom operator.
The PoC which will be launched in June 2021 in alignment with the GSMA Telco Edge Cloud (TEC) initiative, is expected to accelerate development of a global XR application.
MEC platforms are intended to support AR / VR, automatic driving, robotics, and other applications that take advantage of the low latency of 5G. Next generation interactive media apps (XR) require closer proximity to supporting APIs and SDKs in their backend code, to deliver the quality of experience and scale that is required.
However, for developers who want to release their applications globally, using MEC leads to longer lead times and higher operating costs. This is because MEC is provided within the edge networks provided by each telecom operator, it is necessary to individually deploy, test, and operate middleware such as APIs for each MEC provided by telecom operators in each country.
For the telecom operator, the challenge is speed, scale, and collaboration. Today, telecom operators cannot benefit from each other's complementary market development, especially in the space of discovering new “in-network” services that will be required to power the next generation of apps and solutions.
KDDI and Deutsche Telekom will demonstrate that this PoC can be used to efficiently develop low-latency XR applications that are running on smartphones, smart glasses, and other XR devices.
