What comes first, the network or the application?

If you believe many of today’s publications, sensor-laden driverless cars look to become a part of everyday life over the next decade. The processing power needed to handle the flood of data for driving, along with vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to highway, and vehicle to dispatch/management communications is likely to be huge. Edge computing, putting compute infrastructure close to the point of use (beside or over the highway, for example) will likely be called for along with deploying 5G wireless communications for transporting the data.

Here are a few questions to ponder:

• Will the car companies (Ford, GM, Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla) build their own wireless networks to move that data?
• Will the city and state governments who manage the roads and highways move that data?
• Will the wireless network owners be responsible for transport?
• Will a cloud provider such as Amazon or Google build the network that enables Uber and Lyft to function?