The primary benefit of an Edge Cloud is the significant reduction in latency. By deploying compute and storage resources closer to the end-users and devices at the network edge, the physical distance data must travel is minimized. This drastically reduces the round-trip time (RTT), enabling real-time applications such as augmented reality (AR), industrial automation, and connected vehicles, which are highly sensitive to delays and cannot tolerate the latency inherent in communicating with a centralized cloud.

B. Low Cost: Edge deployments can involve significant capital and operational expenditure due to the distributed nature of the hardware, making "low cost" not a primary benefit.

C. Large Bandwidth: Edge nodes typically have more limited resources than centralized data centers; their purpose is to reduce backhaul bandwidth consumption, not to provide massive local bandwidth.

D. High Availability: While high availability is a crucial design goal for any cloud architecture, it is not the unique or primary driver for adopting an edge model over a centralized one.

1. ETSI GR MEC 002 V2.1.1 (2019-08), Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC); Technical Requirements. In Section 5.1, "General requirements," requirement R-MEC-GEN-001 explicitly states, "The MEC system shall be able to provide services and applications with low latency and high bandwidth." Low latency is consistently cited as a key driver for MEC (Edge Cloud).

2. Satyanarayanan, M. (2017). "The Emergence of Edge Computing." Computer, 50(1), 30-39. In the abstract and introduction (p. 30), the paper identifies that edge computing "is a new computing paradigm in which substantial compute and storage resources are placed at the edge of the Internet, in close proximity to mobile devices, sensors, and end users" specifically to address the "unacceptable latency" of the traditional cloud model for interactive applications. (DOI: 10.1109/MC.2017.9).

3. Nokia. (n.d.). Nokia AirFrame open edge server. Official Product Documentation. The documentation states, "The AirFrame open edge server is a key element of our edge cloud solution, which brings cloud-native applications closer to the end user to deliver the ultra-low latency and massive bandwidth required by next-generation services." This highlights ultra-low latency as a primary deliverable.