Benefits of MEC in 5G Cellular Networks from Telecom Operator's View Points

Abstract

In recent years, the demand for further expansion of the capacity of wireless communication is increasing due to the drastic growth in the number of connected devices and the emergence of various services and applications utilizing wireless networks. It is necessary to decrease the traffic on the backhaul networks and reduce the end- to-end (E2E) latency. In order to address the problems, Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) where services, computing resource, storage, etc., would be deployed at the edge of the network is proposed. However, it is difficult for the operators to determine if and how MEC should be deployed in cellular networks because it is still unclear whether a return on investment of MEC could be obtained. In order to deploy MEC on the cellular network, to the best of authors knowledge, no research has been conducted on whether a business model can be established when additional funds are paid for MEC. In this paper, we propose a more sophisticated business model with an ecosystem for MEC deployment. This paper investigates E2E latency and analyzes the optimal MEC resource deployment in the cellular network, and the numerical results verify our analysis. The analysis results reveal that the profit for telecom operator’s revenue tended to increase with the addition of MECs, and the optimal number of MEC maximizing the profit is a function of MEC resource cost and application requirements.