On Friday, Aug. 12, Amazon's cloud division, AWS, launched a new service that is meant to assist companies who want to deploy their own private 5G networks.
Amazon AWS on Company 5G
In late 2021, AWS announced AWS Private 5G, which is now officially available to AWS customers in Ohio, North Virginia, and Oregon. It plans to launch the service internationally in the future.
However, despite the name, AWS Private 5G currently only supports 4G LTE, according to TechCrunch.
AWS chief evangelist, Jeff Barr, wrote in a blog post that the service supports 4G LTE now and will support 5G in the future. Both of the connections will give customers a consistent and predictable level of throughput with ultra-low latency.
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How AWS Private 5G Works
With AWS Private 5G, companies order the hardware, which is a radio unit, and a bunch of special SMIN cards from AWS, according to Amazon.
The service will then provide all of the needed software and APIs to enable companies to set up their own private mobile network on-site.
This can incorporate the AWS Management Console, through which customers specify where they want to build the network and the needed capacity, with AWS automating the network setup and deployment as soon as they've activated the radio units.
The network infrastructure that AWS manages plays well with other AWS services, including its identity and Access Management or IAM offering, which enables IT to control who and what devices can access the 5G network.
AWS Private 5G also channels into Amazon's CloudWatch observability service, which provides insights into the network's health, among other data points.
As for the costs, AWS charges $10 per hour for the radio units, with each hardware supporting speeds of 150 Mbps across up to 100 SIMs.
On top of that, AWS will bill for all data that transfers outwards to the internet, charged at the company's usual Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 rates.
In effect, Amazon is promising companies such as factories with high-bandwidth requirements instant, private 5G, while tying them up into this cloud infrastructure where the fees apply.
Difference Between Public and Private Networks
The 5G network has the potential to transform a lot of industries, and it will be the bedrock of everything, from robotics to vehicles, to virtual reality and more.
However, public 5G networks, which is what most people with 5G-enabled devices can access, have limited bandwidth and coverage as it is shared by millions of people, according to Industry Week.
Aside from that, companies have no control over the network, even if their premises are within the range of the service.
That is why private 5G networks appeal to many corporations, especially those with mission-critical applications that need low-latency data transfers 24/7.
AWS Private 5G uses Citizen Broadband Radio Service or CBRS, a shared 3.5 GHz wireless spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission or FCC authorized in 2020 for use in commercial environments, as previously reserved for the Department of Defense or DoD.
This update opened CBRS to myriad use-cases, including businesses looking to build new 5G services or extend existing 4G or LTE services.
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Written by Sophie Webster
