AT&T Opening 5G Edge Zones With Stand-Alone Network Cores

AT&T has opened 10 5G edge zones across the U.S., with plans to get to “an even dozen by the end of 2022,” with “many more” to follow “in 2023 and beyond,” Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Legg said Tuesday. All the zones have a local stand-alone network core, local public cloud or private data center computing resources and software-defined network capabilities and virtualized network functions, he said. “These edge zones powered by regional 5G standalone network cores will open a range of new capabilities that simply aren’t possible with 4G,” Legg said: “Much like startups that played an integral role in developing new experiences and services because of 4G, we believe that giving them localized, hands-on access to our 5G network will be a foundational building block for tomorrow’s inventors.”