Deploy and scale your low-latency, highly reliable, high-bandwidth network with AWS managed service, AWS Private 5G.
Before I discuss why and how this service provides powerful capabilities, I wanted to explain a few concepts below:
G: Stand for Generation. Could refer to different protocols, frequency, max/min specifications (speed).
LTE: Long-Term Evolution, meaning data transfer speed standard temporary (compromised in a way) until the requirement for 3G, 4G, or 5G is met.
Q: Who defines these specifications and requirements?
A: The International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
3G: Facilitates more growth, increased bandwidth, and support for greater variety of devices and device-types. To support the need for and growth in multi-media applications, devices like mobile phones (iPhones, Androids, etc) needed upgraded standards to be able to deliver packet-switched data with greater spectral efficiency than 2G. This allowed for us to benefit from higher quality audio and video calls and the applications that leveraged that and similar technology. The technical standard requirement for 3G was an information transfer rate of at least 144kbits/second and peaking around ~200kbits/second.
4G: Faster speeds, the addition of mobile hotspots, streaming video, rich multimedia, and high quality music/audio from a variety of applications. Frequency band: 2-8Ghz. Bandwidht: 5-20 Mhz. Data rate: Up to 20 mbps. Requirement of information transfer rate: 10Mbps for downlink and 5Mbps for uplink.
5G: Hyper-connected wireless systems that enable new services like machine-to-machine (M2M) applications along with IoT (internet of things; connected network of devices), that are enabling low power, low throughput field devices that also have long lasting battery life. The requirements needed to meet 5G standards include: -10Gbps connections to endpoints in the field. 1 millisecond end-to-end roundtrip delay (think latency here). 1000x bandwidth per unit area. 10-100x number of connected devices compared to 4G. 90% reduction in network energy utilization.
As the technologies progress (which oftentimes you will see LTE on your phones because achieving these requirements can be difficult if you are on the move or in remote locations) we will continue to see the next evolution of mobile and web applications that will take advantage of the capabilities these improvements provide. And the biggest winner of all is the end user. Us. The consumers.
Myths/ Questions surrounding 5G:
- There is no connection to Covid-19 and 5G. There is also no scientific study/data/whitepaper with case studies providing any of such things.
- 5G is faster 4G: Yes, this is true because it provides significant increases in information transfer rates and reduces not only latency but also the energy your device is consuming in order to transfer data.
Q: What is a private 5G network?
A: A network that allows enterprises or public sector entities to bring high-capability, low latency connectivity whether or not they are geographically near an area that provides public 5G coverage.
Getting a private, reliable, cellular network up and running is a time consuming and cost intensive task. AWS Private 5G is a managed service that provides predictable, reliable, low-latency connectivity that you can easily deploy and scale with the click of a few buttons in your AWS Console. You can even customize bandwidth, latency, and QoS (quality of service) for groups of profile devices or applications. And you won’t pay based on the number of devices on your network, but the network coverage and capacity you need specific to your use case/requirements.
Resources mentioned in this article:
