Deutsche Telekom’s start-up incubator hub:raum is hoping to stimulate innovation in edge computing through a new programme.
The Low Latency Prototyping programme will provide a testbed for start-ups, mature businesses and universities to explore the technology, which brings computing power to network gateways to reduce latency.
Participants can also potentially win an equity-free €300,000 investment as well as additional financial support for their pilot projects.
The incubator said it particularly wants participants involved in developing 5G applications such as image recognition, telepresence, location and mapping, speech recognition, real-time drone control and augmented or virtual reality.
Companies can apply to become partners of the programme until 13 November, with the prototyping phase to take place from December to February.
The hubs are located in Krakow and Berlin.
Tomasz Gerszberg, Senior Vice President Business Operations at Deutsche Telekom, Product Innovation, said: “We are an international operator and the solutions that we will develop right away will have the chance to scale to over a dozen European countries and in the USA.
“It’s a great development platform for any company looking to emphasise their competitiveness on the market.”
Jakub Probola, Head of hub:raum, said: “It’s unique for Europe. Our collaborating companies will have the opportunity to test and develop their services and products before technology will come commercially to the market. This is a powerful market advantage that many companies hope to benefit from.”
An August trial by InterDigital of Multi-edge Access Computing (MEC), a specific application of edge computing in wireless networks, showed a sixfold increase in video streaming efficiency.
Nokia added MEC to its enterprise networking portfolio in September.