Equinix, the digital infrastructure business mostly known for its many co-location centers, has opened a new5Gand edge technology development center, the company announced Thursday. The new testing environment, located in a Dallas data center, is initially focused on a handful of use cases like distributed AI and ML, infrastructure orchestration, AR and VR, and mobile hybrid multi-cloud connectivity. 

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The 5G and Edge Technology Development Center effectively serves as a production-ready interconnection "sandbox" environment from the radio network to the cloud. It includes a fully-operational non-standalone 5G network from Nokia. The center should help service providers and network operators assess the infrastructure needed to build 5G and edge applications. 

"As companies develop new 5G technologies and services, they need a real-world environment to test and bring their concepts to life," Equinix CTO Justin Dustzadeh said in a statement. "With Equinix's rich ecosystem of service providers, partners, and clouds, the 5G and Edge Technology Development Center is the only place to test their concepts in a real way fully, enabling them to bring new capabilities to market, accelerate adoption and deliver new revenue streams faster."

The development center is at DA11, one of Equinix's newest International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers. 

"We're excited to invite private enterprises, commercial organizations and researchers across industries to Dallas to test, validate and accelerate complex 5G deployments and interoperability scenarios," Jim Poole, Equinix VP of Business Development, said in a statement.

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