Zededa at Edge Field Day 3 presented about their Edge Orchestration service. They can provide management of a large number of edge containers in the field. Unexpectedly in my talking with them at the EFD3 Social, they kept bringing up their use cases supporting private cellular connectivity at edge sites.
That got me super interested in their presentation the next day that I recommend you watch. In my previous blog posts, I’ve talked about how Private Cellular can be used at the edge with edge compute devices to help reduce latency. Zededa gave example use cases that are actually using private cellular right now in partnership with edge computing.
Auto Manufacturing Dealership Updates
The first use case is a manufacturing customer who build cars and sell them through dealerships. Those dealerships are the edge where edge compute is needed. Specifically, Zededa talked about how dealerships are using their gear as a CDN for car firmware updates at the edge. Many dealerships have large outdoor spaces where Private Cellular could be useful.
The factory is a use case that is often talked about as a useful site for Private Cellular. Well what about down to the Dealership level? How does private cellular benefit a dealership?
In my recent blog post about GXC’s CBRS Radios at my family’s restaurant, I mentioned that our next door neighbor is an auto dealership. I easily covered that dealership’s parking lot with private cellular connectivity. That is a small dealership; around the country are much larger dealerships with much larger parking lots.
The benefits for Edge Compute that Zededa talked about are solutions to these technical challenges.
Those challenges are solved with Zededa Edge through these solutions.
Private cellular can help dealerships with connecting the edge and IOT applications out amongst the vehicles. This fits the large open areas where private cellular is beneficial use case model.
Global Shipping Container Management
Zededa next talked about global shipping companies. When it comes to current shipping containers on barges, there is a large need to monitor and track environmental conditions wherever those containers go.
In the middle of the ocean, you don’t have public cellular networks at your disposal. Zededa talked about how global shipping container companies are already deploying private cellular at the edge on these ships.
The ships can use Starlink or other satellite based services to provide the backhaul, but how do you connect massive containers that are moved around all over the world? Cellular fixes that use case perfectly at sea and at port.
As these edge compute servers don’t have reliable connectivity and no technical support on ship, edge compute brings a robust manageable containerized system. These systems solve major issues where the cost of flying someone out to fix something can be catastrophic, and the lost of product can be in the millions of dollars. Zededa shared that their edge compute is overcoming these technical challenges.
The Zededa Edge Compute and Private Cellular are solving many of the issues that global shipping have been looking to solve for years. Each ship has a local 2G to 4G Packet Core running on the edge compute servers that can monitor all the environmental conditions of the shipping containers.
Global Shipping is using Virtual Edge Containers to monitor Physical Shipping Containers with Private Cellular connectivity. Private Cellular fits this use case so well that is already being deployed.
Railroad Bungalow
Zededa’s final edge use care was on the railroads. We all know that railroad shipping is in use all over the world to quickly and easily ship materials and products. When near large cities, the trains can use public carriers for connectivity, but what about in the rural locations where these trains spend most of their time?
The railroad companies are building bungalows along a track for monitoring train conditions as railroad cars ride past. These bungalows can be connected to the internet using many backhaul solutions such as satellite or any other number of ways. The usage of private cellular helps the trains because cellular works at high speed over a large outdoor area.
Zededa shared that the bungalows bring the edge compute to where the data collection is needed. These sites have these technical challenges.
Zededa’s Edge Compute solves these technical challenges and opens up possibilities for new technical solutions that are unheard of in this current systems.
Those solutions bring private cellular front and center to solving future problems at railroads. All of these future opportunities may use private cellular located in these bungalows to aid in the connectivity needs.
Private Cellular Builds Upon The Edge
Zededa Cloud Controller can be used to deploy private cellular to edge where it is needed. The edge is a location where Private Cellular makes a lot of sense.
There is a reason all of these use cases are matches for Edge Compute and has needs where Private Cellular benefits. That is because the edge is where connectivity continues to struggle and private cellular flourishes.
