Telecommunications firms have been labeled “bit handlers” or “dumb pipes,” and as major technology firms built massively profitable businesses on the backbone of the internet, telcos could only watch from the sidelines.

But the coming of 5G and edge computing is about to change the game for much of the tech industry, and telcos may soon acquire a new name: multicloud companies.

“For us, we know that telecoms have to become multiclouds,” said Dennis Hoffman (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of the telecom systems business at Dell Technologies Inc. “No telecommunications company can afford to simply hand their network over, unless they’ve reconciled being just a dumb pipe again. They’re waiting for somebody to walk in a say: ‘Here’s the answer.’”

Hoffman spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. They discussed Dell’s role in support of telco initiatives and navigating potential conflict with hyperscalers in pursuit of a cloud operating solution. (* Disclosure below.)

$100-billion-plus market

In the evolving telecommunications landscape, the “answer” is something that Dell is more than happy to provide. The cloud era is beginning to give way to the edge era, and the telecom industry is now caught in the same wave of digital transformation that has swept through other sectors.

“It’s literally as if a massive $100-billion-plus addressable market has effectively decided they need to start buying the kinds of things we’ve been making for years,” Hoffman said. “Within Dell, and certainly within VMware, we’re very strong proponents of the notion of an open, software-defined network architecture built on industry standard hardware, and we’re pretty well-positioned, I think, to provide it. We see immense opportunity.”

That opportunity will not be without the potential for conflict. Large hyperscale cloud providers are all angling for a share of an edge computing market that is expected to expand rapidly between now and the middle of the decade, with annual growth rates of 37% at the high end.

Dell is seeking to carefully position itself squarely in the telco and edge discussion.

“The big difference between a Dell Technologies and a hyperscaler is we’re built in and for a distributed computing world,” Hoffman explained. “Hyperscalers were built for the exact opposite, a world in which they said: ‘Hey, give me your data, your workloads, I’ll think hard about it, and I’ll give you a very flexible economic model.’ The edge puts all of that up in the air, and telco is the leading part of this edge.”

There are signs that some telecos are taking the necessary steps to build out a 5G edge cloud service, albeit in partnership with major cloud providers. Preparations are underway at South Korean mobile carrier SK Telecom to launch such a service, with the support of Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

“They’re faced with a choice,” Hoffman said. “Either they become the cloud operator and allow the hyperscalers in as part of their multicloud or they give up the cloud to the hyperscalers and there go the over-the-top profits again.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE