Deutsche Telekom is to place its edge compute activities in their own unit, to be branded MobiledgeX. This is just the latest announcement from an operator which is hoping to ride on the tide of interest in edge computing to support new revenues and business relationships. But as we have argued before, this can be a double-edged sword for operators. While ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) architecture has strong telco roots (and was originally mobile-specific), other edge compute platforms clearly envisage enterprises or cloud providers having the upper hand in the value chain. The rise of the connected edge will support the distribution of cloud services and content closer to the user. This will be important to reduce strain on…