5G is fast becoming the norm in the tech industry as more countries see the rollout of their own 5G networks. Back at AWS re:invent, Amazon Web Services made a significant announcement, in partnership with Verizon, which made it the first company to have 5G edge computing services. AWS Wavelength is a first of its kind service which brings AWS services closer to developers and, more importantly, end users.
AWS Wavelength will see an initial rollout to 69 sites in the United States. Verizon and AWS have already been hard at work developing and fine tuning the service in Chicago. There companies such as Bethesda Softworks and the National Football League have been developing on and utilising Wavelength to deliver new, enhanced experiences to their users. This includes interactive experiences which may be the next generation of gaming and sports.
AWS Wavelength essentially brings the company’s full suite of services to the 5G Edge. The technology allows telecommunications providers and AWS to deploy remote containers fitted with all of its services. This allows developers to develop with real time experience and with single digit millisecond latency. They will then be able deploy whole new experiences to end users.
The deployment of Wavelength marks a paradigm shift which empowers edge computing like never before. It allows real time compute with large data packets which will find its applications in things like autonomous vehicles and even Smart City management. The deployment of Amazon’s full suite of web services will allow developers to deploy unique experiences for end users which take advantage of the low latency and high data volume. This in addition to the exponential increase in the number of devices each base station is able to handle will enable IoT technologies as well. The availability of machine learning interfaces at the 5G edge enables developers to develop more complex applications with further ranging implications.
Developers won’t need to familiarise themselves with a new interface; Wavelength comes with the same interface developers are used to in their AWS dashboard. In fact, they will simply need to activate instances of AWS services such as EC2, ECS and more which suit their needs at a Wavelength availability zone to use the service.
AWS Wavelength is available in an initial 69 availability zones in 25 AWS Regions. The initial rollout in the United States will be done in partnership with Verizon. However, the company has committed to new availability zone in South Korea (SK Telcom), Japan (KDDI) and Europe (Vodafone) in 2020.