ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing opens new working group for MEC deployment

The +85 members of the ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing group (ETSI MEC ISG) have created a new working group to focus on accelerating market adoption and implementation of systems using MEC-defined framework and services exposed by MEC-standardised Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). 

The new Deployment and Ecosystem Development working group (WG DECODE) will pursue the following goals:

• Faclitating the use of open source components for implementing and validating MEC-related use cases or MEC System entities.
• Identifying best practices to implement a MEC System, by leveraging cloud application design, orchestration and automation, security, and reliability advances.
• Enabling operator adoption and interoperability, by developing and maintaining specifications related to testing, including guidelines and API conformance specifications.
• Increasing accessibility and adoption of MEC specifications by exposing OpenAPI (aka Swagger) compliant MEC API descriptions via the ETSI Forge site, thereby opening up the ecosystem for 3rd-party application developers. 

DECODE is under the leadership of Dr. Walter Featherstone, Principal Research Engineer at VIAVI Solutions.

“The MEC application enablement framework, with its service APIs, offers software developers an incredible opportunity to develop new and innovative services that exploit the contextual information only available at the network edge. The MEC-APIs are there, so now is the time to focus on accelerating the development of the edge ecosystem and start offering service consumers, i.e. Telco subscribers, a new level of experience. The DECODE working group provides a vehicle to do so”.

To highlight the transition of MEC from development and towards deployment, MEC has also approved a new method for demonstrating the viability of MEC in commercial networks, termed MEC Deployment Trials (MDTs). Plugtests™ events and hackathons offer developers a place of choice to test their products, next generation applications and development platforms.