Engineers tend to be a practical lot. They are used to tradeoffs when considering any technology solution to a business problem. For that reason, though they can get involved in "religious" arguments about solutions, most of the time they will acknowledge that there almost are multiple ways to solve any particular problem.
To the extent that network slicing (virtual private networks) is a solution for some latency, bandwidth or availability issues, both private networks and edge computing provide possible substitutes.
So some might theorize that private networks and edge computing will minimize the market for network slicing or virtual private networks.
In the end, this likely will shape up to be another “both and” outcome. As we once debated the extent to which Wi-Fi could be a substitute for mobile connectivity, the likely outcome is that we will use virtual private networks, edge computing and private networks, for different use cases.
As often is the case in the communications and computing businesses, there is no one size fits all solution. Wide area private networks can optimize latency, bandwidth, support for low-power devices and apps or availability and reliability.
But edge computing can address those same problems. So can private networks. Both network slicing and edge computing are suitable for mass deployment apps. Private networks are better for single-enterprise apps.
Private networks and edge computing arguably are better for supporting compute-intensive apps that also have very low latency requirements as well. Network slicing arguably is better suited for mass market, high-scale, highly-distributed apps.
In the end, private networks will not be a complete substitute for network slicing, any more than edge computing will be a universal substitute for network slicing or private networks.
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