Telefónica has activated its commercial Edge computing services for Spanish businesses.

The carrier announced yesterday (February 19) that it has activated Edge sites in five locations across the country.

As such, Telefónica is now offering B2B services in five nodes, located in Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao, and A Coruña.

It comes a month after Telefónica announced that it has begun converting its old copper exchanges, now obsolete following the complete shutdown of the analog fixed network, into Edge data center nodes distributed throughout the country. The telco completed its copper switch-off last year.

According to the telco, the plan is to activate 17 nodes in the first phase of this year.

Of that total, 12 infrastructures are already deployed: the 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.

Telefónica notes that the cities where its Edge nodes have been activated will "benefit from open, differentiated, and interconnected infrastructures capable of providing large computing and data storage capacities at the Edge."

A further five locations are expected later this year, in Zaragoza, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gijón, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Santiago de Compostela. This will bring the total number of nodes to 17.

"This means that by 2026, Telefónica will have 17 nodes, which will gradually activate their commercial Edge services from differentiated infrastructures, adding to the leading communications networks that the company accredits for fixed (FTTH fiber) and mobile (5G Stand Alone, or 5G SA) technology, and taking advantage of the benefits offered by Open Gateway APIs," said Telefónica.

The carrier has already worked with partners on its B2B pilot, including CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles) to launch what it claims is the first European B2B pilot integrating Edge and 5G SA capabilities applied to the railway sector.

The telco is launching two levels of services: Edge Basic and Edge Smart services. Its portfolio is supported by the TTCP (Telefónica Tech Cloud Platform) service operated by Telefónica Tech.

With digital sovereignty a common talking point in the telecoms sector, Telefónica highlighted that its Edge nodes are able to act as low-latency data centers to process, analyze, and store data.

Because of this, Telefónica said this is preferable over large data centers or centralized cloud infrastructures.

Through the use of Edge computing, the telco said that this adds "greater control over data, which contributes to strengthening digital sovereignty within a framework of local regulations."