--- title: 'Edge AI in a 5G world – part 4: How your business can benefit from ‘smart cell towers’' description: This is part of a blog series on the impact that 5G and GPUs at the edge will have on the roll out of new AI solutions. You can read the other posts here. url: https://canonical.com/blog/edge-ai-in-a-5g-world-part-4-how-your-business-can-benefit-from-smart-cell-towers?format=md --- 1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog) 2. Article --- [Eduardo Aguilar Pelaez](https://canonical.com/blog/author/edu-ap "More about Eduardo Aguilar Pelaez") on 3 April 2020 # Edge AI in a 5G world – part 4: How your business can benefit from ‘smart cell towers’ [AI](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/ai) [Edge Computing](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/edge-computing) [GPGPU](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/gpgpu) [GPU](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/gpu) [Telco](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/telco) Share on:* [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.canonical.com/blog/edge-ai-in-a-5g-world-part-4-how-your-business-can-benefit-from-smart-cell-towers "Share on Facebook") * [Twitter](https://twitter.com/share?text=Edge%20AI%20in%20a%205G%20world%20%26%238211%3B%20part%204%3A%20How%20your%20business%20can%20benefit%20from%20%26%238216%3Bsmart%20cell%20towers%26%238217%3B&url=https://www.canonical.com/blog/edge-ai-in-a-5g-world-part-4-how-your-business-can-benefit-from-smart-cell-towers&hashtags=ubuntu "Share on Twitter") * [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www.canonical.com/blog/edge-ai-in-a-5g-world-part-4-how-your-business-can-benefit-from-smart-cell-towers&title=Edge%20AI%20in%20a%205G%20world%20%26%238211%3B%20part%204%3A%20How%20your%20business%20can%20benefit%20from%20%26%238216%3Bsmart%20cell%20towers%26%238217%3B "Share on LinkedIn") --- --- ## Newsletter signup Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox. Work email: \*I agree to receive information about Canonical's products and services. By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/data-privacy). Sign up *This is part of a blog series on the impact that 5G and GPUs at the edge will have on the roll out of new AI solutions. You can read the other posts* [*here*](https://ubuntu.com/blog/tag/edge-computing)*.* ## Recap In part 1 we talked about the industrial applications and benefits that 5G and fast compute at the edge will bring to AI products. In part 2 we went deeper into how you can benefit from this new opportunity. In part 3 we focused on the key technical barriers that 5G and Edge compute remove for AI applications. In this part we will summarise the IoT use cases that can benefit from smart cell towers and how they will help businesses focus their efforts on their key differentiating advantage. Photo by [Joey Kyber](https://unsplash.com/@jtkyber1?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) ## IoT use cases Furthermore, the distributed nature of IoT products means that businesses, system integrators a network operators can configure Edge GPUs to help offload the computation from a wide array of IoT devices. Orchestration of such distributed parts of the AI system is often referred to as ‘ML Ops’ and tools such as [Kubeflow](https://ubuntu.com/kubeflow) can help manage a complex AI pipeline with one single developer interface. ## Domain driven IoT development The possibility of  renting Edge compute resources means that businesses looking to launch an AI product do not all have to build a fully vertically-integrated solution and can instead focus on their domain expertise, e.g. produce an outstanding robot arm or connected camera and simply renting compute time from an Edge GPU server provider. Customers are embracing this compute-offloading architecture to bring AI products to smartphones, IoT devices and robotics. The ‘5G + Edge GPU’ marriage will unlock AI solutions that will have previously not been possible. ## Application domains The Industries that will benefit from this are; * Smart cities * Agriculture, * Manufacturing * Transportation * Retail and * Call centers Overall, all of these applications will benefit from; 1. having computing at the edge, 2. a good 5G network to connect them 3. and great software to manage the whole fleets and estates of IoT devices. ## Key players Such changes in multiple aspects of the AI, telco and IoT industry will not be brought about by one company alone, as such various industries need to work together, namely: * **Silicon** vendors such as NVIDIA, Intel and AMD. * **Network** specialists such as Juniper Networks, Arista and Cisco. * **5G** providers such as Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia. * IoT and robotics **manufacturers** such as Bosch, Riggado and Siemens. * **Public** **cloud** providers such as Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud. In line with its core mission, Canonical is keen to enable and accelerate the adoption of open source software.We are very excited by the prospect of helping enterprises in this space to reach their goals in the most [effective](https://ubuntu.com/pricing/consulting), [dependable](https://ubuntu.com/support) and [secure](https://ubuntu.com/security) way possible. #### Related posts --- [estelacarmona](https://canonical.com/blog/author/estelacarmona) 28 August 2026 ### [AI harnesses for telco autonomous networks](https://canonical.com/blog/ai-harnesses-for-telco-autonomous-networks) 5G Article As the telco industry transitions toward Autonomous Networks Level 4, a fundamental architectural challenge has emerged: how do you build a secure, reliable and interoperable AI harness that bridges probabilistic AI reasoning with deterministic, carrier-grade network execution? ... --- [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical) 25 August 2026 ### [Arduino® VENTUNO™ Q is available for pre-order with Ubuntu pre-installed](https://canonical.com/blog/arduino-ventuno-q-is-available-for-pre-order-with-ubuntu-pre-installed) Canonical announcements Ubuntu tech blog London, UK – August 25, 2026 – Following our initial collaboration announcement in March 2026, Canonical and Arduino (a subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.) are excited to announce that VENTUNO Q is now generally available for pre-order, pre-loaded with Ubuntu. VENTUNO Q is a dual-brain developer board designed for edge AI and robot ... --- [Gabriel Aguiar Noury](https://canonical.com/blog/author/g-aguiar-noury) 16 June 2026 ### [A look into Ubuntu Core 26: Building a local AI inference appliance in a virtual machine](https://canonical.com/blog/ubuntu-core-26-ai-box) Internet of Things Ubuntu tech blog Welcome to this blog series which explores innovative uses of Ubuntu Core. Throughout this series, Canonical’s Engineers will show what you can build with this Core 26 release, highlighting the features and tools available to you.  In this first blog, Farshid Tavakolizadeh, Engineer Manager for Canonical’s Industrial team, will show you h ...