Telefónica activates commercial Edge services in Spain

Hot on the heels of the progress made in deploying Autonomous Network technology throughout its fixed and wireless infrastructures in Spain, Brazil and Germany, Telefónica has now launched its Edge computing services for businesses and administrations as part of its European Edge Plan.

The Edge services are designed to enable applications such as Industry 4.0, mobile robotics, logistics, predictive maintenance and autonomous driving.

The commencement of commercialisation for Edge nodes will see the immediate activation of business-to-business (B2B) services in five key locations in Spain: Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and A Coruña. Some 12 infrastructures are already deployed: five corresponding to Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and A Coruña, all with B2B services; and seven more nodes, located in Madrid (its second node), Barcelona, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Valladolid, Terrassa and Merida.

By the end of 2026, five more locations will be added to these 12 nodes: Zaragoza, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gijón, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Santiago de Compostela. These 17 nodes will gradually activate their commercial Edge services from differentiated infrastructures, adding Telefónica’s fixed (FTTH fibre) and mobile (5G standalone) technology, and taking advantage of the benefits offered by application programming interfaces based on the GSMA’s Open Gateway standard.

The operator regards what it calls the “productive ecosystem” around these cities as benefiting from open, differentiated and interconnected infrastructures capable of providing large computing and data storage capacities at the Edge. This, it says, will enable companies to enjoy lower latency and greater efficiency in their process towards digital transformation in their operations.

In making its services available, the operator said it had identified needs from businesses and could now provide services that were not feasible until the emergence of Edge, which powers applications and use cases. The services allow information to be processed as close as possible to the activity, factory, office, store or business, reducing latency, dependencies and risks, representing an evolution of its cloud offering.

Service offerings now available from Telefónica are split into Edge Basic and Smart Edge. The former focuses on data sovereignty, stable infrastructure and low-latency cloud services, and encompasses virtual machines with graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI computing and secure, controlled storage. The latter offers dynamic, real-time services with mobility, low-latency connectivity and private 5G access points.

Edge Basic is said to be based on a “stable and predictable” Edge infrastructure that brings the cloud closer and ensures data control, in compliance with sovereignty requirements according to regulatory frameworks, whether national, regional or even local. Each node defines an availability zone, allowing companies to deploy applications with additional guarantees of business continuity and enhanced communications resilience.

Edge Basic also supports sovereign cloud services, including advanced computing capacity, thanks to virtual machines with GPUs. Companies and institutions will be able to use these GPUs in service mode, with low latency and in a sovereign manner, without having to make the corresponding initial investment. It also incorporates sovereign AI capabilities through agents and adaptability with retrieval-augmented generation.

Dynamic in its nature, Smart Edge is said to offer the advantages of mobility for real-time application operation. These include low-latency connectivity in critical processes with the possibility of operating services on the move or in a distributed manner, bringing AI closer to the point where business activity takes place.

The intelligent and dynamic service option is attributed with being capable of adding key advantages such as selecting optimal nodes at the right time and instancing applications. For example, creating a single, functional operational copy (instance), allowing it to be executed in memory under the direction of the user who chooses when it is in operation. The Smart Edge service provides access to the chosen node via FTTH or 5G SA, depending on preferences, with the option to request quality of service and private 5G access points.

Attempting to demonstrate exactly what it could offer through Edge services, Telefónica also revealed it had partnered with manufacturing firm Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) to launch the first European B2B pilot integrating Edge and 5G SA capabilities applied to the railway sector.

With Edge, CAF has been able to deploy interior perception services based on artificial vision without the need to install processing nodes in each car, in turn maintaining low latency and ensuring processing close to the asset.