SCWS: MEC and fog computing make the strongest case yet for small cells

At the Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) in London earlier this month, the star of the show in terms of acronyms was undoubtedly MEC (Mobile Edge Computing). This lies at the heart of many operators’ roadmaps to deliver services more efficiently and enhance user experience. Along with related efforts like the OpenFog consortium (developing specs around Cisco’s concept of fog and mist computing at the edge), it will arguably make the large-scale Internet of Things practicable. And for the small cell industry, it is a significant positive – any architecture which distributes the cloud platform to the network edge will inherently rely on small cells and local gateways, and in many cases MEC will justify a small cell deployment for…