To help telcos harness 5G as a business services platform, Google Cloud recently announced its Global Mobile Edge Cloud (GMEC) strategy.

GMEC is aimed at delivering a portfolio and marketplace of 5G solutions built jointly with telcos; an open cloud platform for developing these network-centric applications; and a global distributed edge for optimally deploying these solutions.

Google Cloud has also joined hands with AT&T to help enterprises take advantage of Google Cloud’s technologies and capabilities using AT&T network connectivity at the edge, including 5G. The two companies are testing a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions for industries, such as retail, manufacturing, and transportation, that bring together AT&T’s network, Google Cloud’s technologies including AI/ML and Kubernetes, and edge computing to help enterprises address real business challenges.

Google Cloud also announced Anthos for Telecom, which will bring its Anthos cloud platform to the network edge. Much like Android provided an open platform for mobile-centric applications, Anthos for Telecom, based on open-source Kubernetes, will provide an open platform for network-centric applications.

As a part of this transformation, many of the applications, like OSS (Operations Support Systems), BSS (Business Support Systems), and network functions that once resided in telecom environments, will now move to Google Cloud. This will benefit customers in reducing costs and improving IT efficiencies. Further, customers will be able to use Google Cloud to virtualize network functions for their core communications networks.