100 MEC Deployment Trials Analysis in China Mobile

### Overview In this presentation, Han Youding, a project manager at China Mobile, outlines China Mobile's 5G Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) development strategy, technical layout, and industrial application trials. The combination of MEC and 5G serves as a core starting point for the telecommunications operator to upgrade networks and services, expand into the 2B enterprise network market, and develop edge computing services. The goal of 5G extends beyond consumer communications to production and social governance, enabling digital transformation across industries such as manufacturing, electric power, security, and connected networking, while also supporting self-operated 2C over-the-top (OTT) services like eMBB and HD video.

### Key Topics - **Technical Layout and Capabilities:** Edge computing functions as a converged architecture uniting 5G network capabilities and cloud computing to offer low latency and high security. Key technical components include local data offloading via the User Plane Function (UPF) and opening 5G network capabilities (such as wireless positioning from base stations) to third-party edge platforms using RESTful APIs. - **Cloud Service Offerings:** China Mobile provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering virtualized compute, storage, networking resources, virtual machines, and container image management. It also provides Platform as a Service (PaaS) integrating capabilities such as video encoding/decoding, AI reasoning, device protocol conversion, databases, and security assurance packaged via secondary APIs. - **Analysis of 100 Deployment Trials:** Among 100 China Mobile 5G leading trial projects, at least 60% demonstrated explicit edge computing demand across 2B and 2B2C services. Every analyzed edge trial required traffic offloading via the UPF, leveraging 5G control and user plane separation to push the UPF closer to end users. - **Deployment Location and Maintenance Models:** Deployments are divided between customer-premises sites and operator sites. Services requiring local data processing generally favor on-premises deployment, where operation and maintenance (O&M) are handled by the customer or a third party. When deployed at the operator site, O&M is handled by the operator or a third party. - **Business Prioritization Framework:** Edge computing use cases are categorized into local and general business. China Mobile prioritizes services based on technical entry threshold and industry maturity. Scenarios with low technical entry thresholds and high industry maturity (such as local business with strong requirements for local data processing) are deployed first, whereas general business scenarios (such as autonomous driving and high-definition video requiring ultra-low latency and large bandwidth) require longer-term deployment paths.

### Technical Details - **5G Network Integration:** Employs control and user plane separation to sink UPF instances closer to users for local traffic offload; provides industrial network slicing, customized device quality, and testing across both 5G Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) network environments. - **Application Lifecycle & Cloud Platform:** Offers a one-stop network-edge-cloud solution covering application deployment and complete application lifecycle management.

### Takeaways China Mobile is actively driving 5G and MEC convergence by lowering technical entry barriers for industrial partners and providing unified network, edge, and cloud solutions. Partners and application developers are encouraged to participate in China Mobile's edge computing incubator plan to jointly build out the 5G plus MEC industrial ecosystem.