SoftBank will start Deployment of 5G MEC in Japan

SoftBank have announced that it has opened a 5G MEC site in the Kanto region and started the nationwide deployment of MEC servers in Japan from May 2022. SoftBank 5G MEC delivers a low-latency, high-quality and highly secure service experience by using 5G SA commercial services, which SoftBank began rolling out in October 2021.

Up to now, when a user accessed an application or service, a communication path was set up from the user device to a relatively far away application server. SoftBank’s 5G MEC is making now possible for customers to experience high-speed, low-latency services through the deployment of applications close to user devices within the 5G Standalone network, which significantly reduces server access times.

SoftBank’s 5G MEC platform provides a Kubernetes^*3-based container environment, which is a de facto standard for application development.

From physical infrastructure set-up to application deployment and distribution, 5G MEC sites are automated. Such features make applications on the 5G MEC platform more fault-tolerant, and they also enable faster service rollout with reduced complexity, both for application developers and application providers (such as SaaS providers). This improves a variety of industry services such as emergency notifications (sent in the event of natural disasters, for example), in-building IoT-based network deployments, factory automation, multi-user network gaming, automated driving, among others.

Keiichi Makizono, SoftBank Corp. Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) said : “This deployment of 5G MEC is a major milestone for SoftBank. Its compatibility with network slicing, along with its automation of operation features, make it unique across the industry. With our partners, we’ll develop a multi-industry ecosystem to become a complete digital platform provider by harnessing the capabilities of our 5G MEC solution”