The news that the two main bodies setting standards for edge computing – ETSI MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) and the OpenFog Consortium – are working together is more than just another memorandum of understanding between two of the telecoms industry’s innumerable alliances. At least, we have to hope it is more, because warring efforts in this important area of emerging telco architectures could jeopardize the benefits targeted from 5G and the distributed cloud. Operators are faced with several huge technical challenges, which they need to address in parallel over the next few years in order to transform their ailing business model. Migrating to 5G while supporting a decade of 4G coexistence; virtualizing some or all of the network and making…