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AWS Private 5G

by Trisell on 11/30/21, 5:18 PM with 358 comments

• by laserbeam on 11/30/21, 8:39 PM

  It seems everyone here is confused. Here's the official FAQ, and it has 0 marketing garbage.

  https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/faqs/

  There's no "telecom as a service", and there's no "5g can be split into multiple networks" nonsense.

  Amazon is just selling 5g access points and hardware (just like you would install wifi), and rents you a private connection for that hardware to AWS, and management of that network from AWS. Basically.

• by WORMS_EAT_WORMS on 11/30/21, 6:41 PM

  Become a telecom as a service!

  Super cool. For those who are glancing over, this is a big deal. 5G isn't really like 4G upgraded. It's more its own thing. I believe this has been available though for a while and many telecoms have partnerships with FAANG beyond Amazon.

  With 5G you can essentially split a network into multiple partitions and scale them independently on-demand called Network Slicing. (like cloud computing but just the network).

  This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. This is also useful for scaling network resources to services as they need it.

  Short-term, things like "Tesla Free Network" could exist for their self-driving cars. Or, Uber offering free fast Internet to their drivers or a truly private device.

  Long-term, I am concerned about the emergence of private networks with different access. Such as a "Google Network" or a "Netflix Network" that offer different services or privacy levels at different costs.

  It's a crazy, scary, but also fun direction we are going.

  Edit: Final comment. If you think this might be the death of AT&T with independent providers, think again . Amazon & Co. and others like Google are bringing their developer platform, while the telecoms offer their infrastructure. It's a gross partnership that makes sense. When you send bits over the network -- everyone will be getting paid except you.

• by Ballu on 11/30/21, 8:54 PM

  Let me put my perspective, coming from a guy who is involved in private Cellular networking (US as well as other countries):

  1) Private 5G can be deployed either with licensed operator (Cellular provider) or in CBRS band (CBRS band is opened by FCC for the private cellular deployment). It can be used free or paid, different options. (Fees is minimal).

  2) CBRS still doesnt support 5G. No idea how AWS will provide. But even if it is private 4G, for the end user it doesnt matter.

  3) Your available bandwidth is limited by the air waves bandwidth you are using, nit by 4G or 5G. Per enterprise, CBRS band is limited to LTE equivalent band (20MHz). Total CBRS band is 200MHz, if I am not wrong). You are not going to get giga speed just because its 5G.

  4) Not all phones support CBRS band. You will be limited to CBRS band support in handset feature. 5) Each end device will need SIM (SIM card either physical or virtual). Its not like your laptop will be connected with private 4G or 5G. You will need modem as well as SIM card (unless your devices support these features).

  6) Its really for small geographic reason. Its not that easy to take the equipment with you and start using. (like in car or train etc).

  7) There is a concept of SAS server, that's why AWS device needs to be connected to this server in cloud (There are SAS license holders, to them). Once you install the system and that is connected to the SAS server, first you get the frequency band which is open in your area. If some one using that band (another CBRS player), you are out of luck (ask me , who has to call different teams when deploy in lab). PLus, there are scenarios when these licenses can be revoked (if you are using free band). The law enforcement can ask FCC to use the band temporarily. GCC can revoke your lic and stop the system.

  What AWS did is big, but for enterprises.

• by FemmeAndroid on 11/30/21, 5:45 PM

  I'd love to see _some_ pricing estimates. There's a good amount I'd pay to get something like this for some rural communities, but it's unclear if I'm anywhere near able to afford it.

• by mfer on 11/30/21, 5:43 PM

  I wonder which smart TV provider will be the first to use this instead of home wifi where people can disable or black hole connectivity.

• by joewadcan on 11/30/21, 7:11 PM

  Are they using Magma[1]? I couldn't tell from their sparse FAQ[2]. The Magma community is strong and they're making great progress on the open standard.

  1 Magma - Facebook built 5G hotspot platform: https://www.magmacore.org/

  2 AWS FAQ - https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/faqs/

• by arendtio on 11/30/21, 6:55 PM

  How is a private 5G network different from wifi from a consumer/business perspective? Does it have a superior range?

  (Honest question)

• by ethanpil on 11/30/21, 5:42 PM

  I wonder if this is a product that was built on top of something they needed to use internally. Makes me wonder how Amazon is using this technology for themselves... Anyone care to speculate?

• by commoner on 11/30/21, 11:12 PM

  The first major client using this service is Boost Mobile, which was acquired by Dish Network from Sprint as a condition of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger:

  https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/dishs-rouanne-says-aws-5g-...

• by anonymousDan on 11/30/21, 5:36 PM

  Surely the problem is access to spectrum, or is the idea to rely on unused spectrum bands reserved for local experimental use?

• by vijaykodam on 12/1/21, 9:55 AM

  Nokia has been the pioneer in Private wireless networks. They have already deployed production ready private LTE / 5G systems in ports and factories.

  For more info: https://dac.nokia.com/private-wireless/

  Disclaimer: I work for Nokia.

• by 8ytecoder on 11/30/21, 9:31 PM

  I think people are missing the point on what this is about. It's not about telecom at all. 5G is being looked at as an alternative to WiFi in certain environments - large retail stores, warehouses, ...etc. Basically anything where you need large scale WiFi mesh setups and the devices are controlled by a single entity.

• by axegon_ on 11/30/21, 6:30 PM

  I'm curious to find out where this would be available. I spent about two years in an ISP provider and any service you wanted to add that involved telecom services required a million and one licenses and government permissions, most of which took months if not years.

• by a-dub on 11/30/21, 7:54 PM

  so i'm guessing this means they use 5g in their warehouses for the their robots/cameras/etc and they've turned it into a product?

  it's still a little unclear to me when 5g becomes a better option than 802.11. the standard bands are just a little faster than lte (which 802.11 outperforms) and the mmwave high bandwidth stuff requires line of sight with no occlusion. 802.11 seems better all around, it can work at high bandwidth without the line of sight requirements... especially considering that most mobile devices are designed to switch between 802.11 and mobile.

• by tyingq on 11/30/21, 6:10 PM

  Probably worth noting that the regular cell providers can also provide SIMS that dump the end device into your existing, normal private network rather than the internet.

  I don't know how this service differs in pricing, so it's hard to quantify when this AWS service would be a better idea outside of coverage issues.

• by milesward on 11/30/21, 6:19 PM

  This is such a dick move. Ex-AWS superstars built https://www.soracom.io/, made AWS folks aware, who balked at a deal. Example 1198170892703973...

• by cbsmith on 12/1/21, 1:01 AM

  Once again 5G's brand overloading leads to as much confusion as clarification.

  Yes, just as with LTE, CBRS is one of the bands (specifically n48) allocated for 5GNR. The GAA tier is pretty open for anyone to use, with all the good & the bad that comes with that. Apple added n48 with the iPhone 11, and a lot of other popular phones support either LTE or 5G on that band.

  In effect, CBRS 5G is like WiFi with better range.

• by verelo on 11/30/21, 5:41 PM

  I'd love to set this up for my rural community. I've got a good connection but many people have no cell service, no dsl lines, no cable...literally nothing. Until something like starlink is ubiquitous i feel like this could go a long way to solving their problems.

• by jack_riminton on 11/30/21, 5:42 PM

  I feel like this has come off the back of Amazon creating their own 5G for their warehouses and robots. Can any Amazon employees confirm this?

• by htrp on 11/30/21, 9:09 PM

  From the conversation I had, you don't need a spectrum license and Amazon ships you the equipment. The killer app is that there is no per device costs and you pay based on your usage.

  Unfortunately, no mention of actual pricing.

• by eliseumds on 11/30/21, 6:55 PM

  I still don't get why AWS keeps using images to display textual content. It's inaccessible and it looks terrible on mobile devices.

• by henvic on 11/30/21, 5:58 PM

  They could've called it AWS Infinidash Mobile.

• by yayr on 11/30/21, 8:11 PM

  How does this work from a regulatory standpoint? Most countries license frequency bands to dedicated operators under very specific conditions. These operators usually pay a lot of money for that and need to provide a certain degree of public coverage.

• by benjaminwai on 11/30/21, 5:57 PM

  I wonder how do they link back to the main network? Would it require a fiber backbone in place as a prerequisite? Or through satellite uplink? i.e., would somewhere really remote, say, the oil rig in the North Sea, be out of luck for such installation?

• by kizer on 11/30/21, 7:42 PM

  So is this basically an alternative to lots of spread out WiFi routers? Like a university could get rid of all the routers in all the buildings and just have one or two of the "towers" Amazon would provide?

• by ACAVJW4H on 11/30/21, 5:41 PM

  Open Source software stack to run private LTE/5G with SDR https://github.com/srsran/srsRAN

• by simonebrunozzi on 11/30/21, 6:38 PM

  Not sure how big the market will be for something like this; apart from, well, drug cartels in Mexico </joking>.

  5G uses multiple bands, and the most useful, and highest throughput one, doesn't have a great range (high band, 24 GHz and up). So, perhaps you use 5G tech/devices but not use that, and instead focus on low band (600–900 MHz, few kilometers of range)? Would a mining company use this to oversee a large property? Would a large cattle operation benefit?

• by ghshephard on 11/30/21, 5:34 PM

  Intriguing - but the first three questions that immediately came to mind didn't seem to have an immediate answer. (1) What range/power, (2) Pricing (3) Density/Number of connections? I'd love to see a network architecture that shows how they hop from antenna to antenna as well, and whether it's guaranteed with no interruption to service.

• by djfergus on 11/30/21, 8:34 PM

  Q: What spectrum does AWS Private 5G support?

  By default, AWS Private 5G uses shared spectrum like Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) in the US.

• by Raed667 on 11/30/21, 6:18 PM

  Now imagine a future where every device you buy is connected to the internet wirelessly, whether you like it or not.

• by cinbun8 on 11/30/21, 5:31 PM

  What's the business case for a service like this? Is there anyone on HN that would order this for example?

• by no_time on 11/30/21, 7:28 PM

  >Run a smart manufacturing facility

  >Enable business-critical applications

  I'm not sure what manufacturing facility are they talking about but at the places I know you will get ridiculed for even entertaining the idea of controlling infrastructure over anything but good old copper or fiber.

  And they are right.

• by parhamn on 11/30/21, 5:38 PM

  Curious if anyone is familiar: if you could purchase these for your home and all your devices that have wifi chips also have 5g chips, how do you choose between 5g and wifi for your home? Would 5g make sense in wifi-like deployments? Any reason this tech hasn’t merged?

• by turtlebits on 11/30/21, 5:47 PM

  I wonder what the range is for their small cell towers. Would be interesting for off-grid/remote communities (pair with Starlink?).

  edit: Reading more, it might not be the right use case - doesn't sound like something you use for your phone.

• by bhewes on 11/30/21, 8:33 PM

  This would be useful in oil and gas fields that have a ton of IOT on them.

• by ram_rattle on 12/1/21, 6:05 AM

  AWS for telecom will be really opex heavy, though its a boon for small players,MVNO etc but who wants to keep paying aws every month for something they are going to run for ever.

• by drewda on 11/30/21, 6:11 PM

  Is this a competitor to Twilio's managed SIM card service? That's been my go-to in recent years whenever we need to provide cell data connectivity to a small number of devices.

• by londons_explore on 11/30/21, 11:32 PM

  So who does all the necessary spectrum licensing and allocation?

• by epa on 11/30/21, 5:52 PM

  How does this compare to Helium 5G? https://www.helium.com/5G

• by alexatalktome on 11/30/21, 6:51 PM

  Heard it may not launch soon because the project is so stressful employees may quit before it’s done. Lots of weekend work and lying management.

• by IMSAI8080 on 11/30/21, 7:57 PM

  What radio spectrum does it use for a private 5G network? Isn't it all expensively purchased by the phone companies already?

• by javajosh on 11/30/21, 6:49 PM

  Sounds like they are selling Wifi++ - what confuses me is how/why Amazon is involved, apart from selling the hardware. Is there a subscription piece?

  The implication of this product concerns me, although maybe it's just a communication issue. Amazon is selling this as an Amazon product, but wifi isn't an Amazon product, nor is 5G. They are retailing the gear to put up a 5G network - so why call it a "product" and roll it out like this?

• by a5withtrrs on 12/1/21, 9:09 AM

  This seems a lot like competition for 'Azure for Operators' offering from Microsoft.

• by nerdbaggy on 11/30/21, 5:34 PM

  This is fantastic, I wonder what the pricing will be. Cellular stuff is always expensive it seems.

• by atlgator on 11/30/21, 9:01 PM

  Will this let me build out a 5G network near my mom's house in the sticks?

• by jgalt212 on 11/30/21, 7:10 PM

  Can I just use this as a cheaper (hopefully) home internet connection?

• by the_arun on 11/30/21, 5:46 PM

  Does this need an "id" (phone number) to communicate in 5G?

• by vmception on 11/30/21, 7:31 PM

  Would be awesome to see them make a proposal to authenticate to the Helium network, I believe they intend to also support private 5g?

  anyway Amazon could handle the logistics to rollout hardware much better than existing manufacturers on the Helium network.

• by nixpulvis on 11/30/21, 6:18 PM

  How long until Amazon takes on the existing cell companies?

• by NicoJuicy on 11/30/21, 10:48 PM

  Which telecom would really want to partner with Amazon?

• by throwbigdata on 12/1/21, 1:41 AM

  Finally! Toll quality ATM PVCs to the desktop!

• by imwillofficial on 11/30/21, 9:43 PM

  The number of people completely missing what this service does either means they did not read the article, or the article was very poor in clairity.

  For those who were mistaken, which was it?

• by Digory on 11/30/21, 9:26 PM

  Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1865/

  Which seems to be true for me. Despite having semi-pro levels of wifi gear and a "fiber" provider at home, I can often get transfers work by turning 'off' the wifi and going to LTE.

  If I were a campus IT administrator, it probably makes a lot of sense to get rid of wifi costs.

• by unixhero on 11/30/21, 7:24 PM

  Which countries???

• by savant_penguin on 11/30/21, 7:54 PM

  Why would telecoms offer a service that could compete with their own?

• by rajul on 11/30/21, 5:30 PM

  Super excited about the new edge usecases this could potentially enable

• by fredliu on 11/30/21, 5:44 PM

  Spectrum questions aside (which obviously one of the biggest one), could this enable running Helium 5G on AWS?

  -- Edit: I don't own any Helium, just curious from tech side what this new AWS service could offer. Not sure the downvotes are particularly about Helium or any crypto related discussion.

• by kumarski on 11/30/21, 5:47 PM

  I wonder how many CISOs and CTOs trust Amazon.

  I'm not sufficiently technical on this front and so I'm probably being a little on the side of paranoia but I don't trust Amazon with my cellular infrastructure.

• by sbisson on 11/30/21, 6:26 PM

  Catching up with Azure, I see. Edge Zones has been available since May.

  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/private-multi-ac...