Crown Castle, the largest wireless tower owner and operator in the US, has joined the Open19 Foundation, which is working to spread the use of a data center hardware standard created at LinkedIn to make hardware installation equally fast and easy both in core data centers and at edge locations. Open19 defines a set of four standard server chassis form factors, a rack cage those chassis can easily slide into, a power shelf, and a network switch.  

The foundation announced Crown’s move in a newsletter this week.  

The news highlights wireless communications infrastructure companies’ interest in playing a role in the development of edge computing infrastructure. Wireless tower sites are a natural fit for this infrastructure, sitting at the point where wireless end-device traffic gets passed on to physical networks.