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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 be

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.

ribosometronome 5y ago
Please excuse my vast ignorance but wouldn't Tesla, Uber or whomever need to deploy a massive network of 5g towers for that? Or is more that Tesla/Uber/etc could much more easily become an MVNO-like-provider because of network slicing?
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  For those at home reading this... MVNO = "Mobile Virtual Network Operator". Aka a network that doesn't have its own wireless infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  The second comment. The telecoms via 5G have been positioning themselves to rent their infrastructure on-demand. The AWS partnership is this but Amazon then re-extending it to developers on their platform as part of their "Cloud" offerings. I doubt Amazon has many towers of their own here and are almost entirely through one of the telecoms.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    But this doesn't use telco towers? Amazon is literally selling antenae.
  - thrashh 5y ago
    Isn’t this service nothing related to using existing infrastructure? It looks like Amazon is sending you base stations to set up a private network in one location.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    >I doubt Amazon has many towers of their own Their offering page specifically says that AWS "delivers your network hardware (small cell radio base-station and servers) Attach power and internet connectivity to smart cells and servers" They are not using telco partnerships here, or at least if they are, it's not on the level of carving out a chunk of the telco network for private use. I struggle to see how this remains a "cloud" offering rather than a hardware rental.
  - hadlock 5y ago
    I think this is more like long haul wifi for your corporate campus, factory, port, university etc. Maybe even for things like parking meters (san francisco's parking meters are famously being updated/upgraded because they're ending EDGE network used by the modems in the parking meters)
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  at this point these are 2 sides of telecom have nearly evolved to completely separate industries one services towers on the ground. base stations. maintenance. physical network deployment the other is the services of running the network. roaming agreements. customer management. internet breakout tesla and other vehicle makers may see value owning the service side but very unlikely they want to maintain a network
alexatalktome 5y ago
Seems unlikely many firms would want to scale out the hardware of their own network - rented from Amazon no less- instead.
endorphine 5y ago
> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. If that's true, I wonder if this affects Tailscale's business and how.
- jauer 5y ago
  It's not new. You can get private address space that's routed into your network, but if you trust telco network security, you probably don't have anything worth protecting (or run a VPN over the top and only use the private APN for persistent IP addressing). For example, AT&T's private APN service has been around since the 3G days: https://www.business.att.com/products/private-mobile-connection.html https://www.business.att.com/products/private-mobile-connect...
- xuki 5y ago
  This requires a physical cell tower and 5G receiver so it’s not as flexible as running a VPN client on your laptop.
colpabar 5y ago
> 5G isn't really like 4G upgraded. It's more its own thing. This is my understanding as well, but I have no idea about any of the details. I know there's something cool about "beams". Do you (or anyone) have a good "entry-level" article/doc that outlines some of the major features that makes it so different than 4G?
- ksec 5y ago
  Search Massive MIMO, Beamforming ( Which isn't really new ), Small Cells, NR. That is about it really. You can ignore mmWave which is pure hype. Most of the other enhancements are on the carrier / operation side and not consumer. You can also ignore all the 5G Self Driving Vehicle crap.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    >5G Self Driving Vehicle crap. I live in a dense suburb of a large city and 5G coverage seems not that great. I'm not sure why self-driving requires or gains much benefit from 5g anyway, but I wouldn't want to rely on it. You can certainly do car-to-car communication & coordination without it, and you wouldn't want a minor network outage turning the system into chaos.
    - ksec 5y ago
      Because certain vendor from certain country have a huge patent portfolio on Autonomous vehicle (AV) and wanted it to rely on 5G so that everything is centralised and could easily be controlled in the name of traffic shaping (cough). And somehow (cough) EU was brought into the whole thing until a Saint appeared, after being banished to hell he finally came back and convinced enough people AV with 5G would need to total state surveillance. I think, if I remember correctly EU finally abandoned that idea. But as with everything it may come back someday. ( Hope not )
      - Talanes 5y ago
        Any reason for the obfuscation?
vineyardmike 5y ago
Huh? This doesn't seem to use AT&T at all, and amazon is actually bringing their own hardware too. This isn't MVNO-aaS. Its Antenae-aaS.
- ksec 5y ago
  Yes I dont think OP's description is an accurate usage of Private 5G. Where it is aiming at industrial ( warehouse ) or cooperate usage within certain location ( cooperate HQ ). Not sure how Tesla or Uber would get their own private 5G.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  Ah, you're right. I am mistaken for AWS Wavelength.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    Hate to be that guy, but... AWS Wavelength is Ec2 instances running on-prem on existing telco locations.
- cshipley 5y ago
  >This isn't MVNO-aaS. Its Antenae-aaS. I think a lot of people are missing this point. This will not allow someone to become their own carrier. It allows someone to install their own "cell towers" and have devices connect to them without having to use a 3rd party carrier.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Btw, MVNO-aaS does exist (for 5G, too): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_enabler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_enabler
  - saltminer 5y ago
    Yeah, while you might theoretically be able to build a national 5G network using this, it would be way more expensive vs just building it yourself. Amazon wouldn't be marketing this if they didn't expect to have a healthy profit margin, after all. This seems more applicable in cases where you need 5G but there is no/insufficient 5G already, when it would be prohibitively expensive to go to existing carriers (mobile data rates in the US are ridiculous), or when the threat model necessitates a private network.
reaperducer 5y ago
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. So like WhisperNet, except 5G, and anyone can make their own?
danudey 5y ago
None of this is really what this service is intended for. If you read the whitepaper, they list examples of what this would be useful for; namely, covering your own space with your own 5G for your own devices. Deploy it in these areas instead of WiFi: 1. A stadium's remote ad/video/informational displays 2. A logistics distribution hub's stock-tracking robots/systems/handhelds 3. A corporate campus's smart displays or door access systems 4. Oil and gas drilling/processing sites's systems monitoring in remote, non-covered areas So this isn't about creating a new provider in your local city, but rather about connecting your devices in your space in cases where WiFi is insufficient or overloaded.
- blowski 5y ago
  Is there any reason it _couldn't_ become that?
  - hattmall 5y ago
    Probably not, except cost. It would be too expensive to compete with the national providers and then you would still need to interface with them for any service outside of the city. It's possible, just not the intended use case and not a logical use.
    - blowski 5y ago
      I remember people making very similar claims about AWS EC2 in 2007.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        Ah, so the mythical beast of future Amazon 5G use cases can be anything I want then, right? How about unicorns? I see what you’re saying, but just because a similar statement was made about another service, does not mean the outcome will be the same in this instance with vastly different dynamics at play.
  - Melkman 5y ago
ineedasername 5y ago
>Uber offering free fast Internet to their drivers Amazon is talking about installing actual local hardware infrastructure here though. It seems like that only makes sense where there is no existing 5G, otherwise it's probably just cheaper to use the telco's infrastructure since, as you said, they could work directly with the telco to get their own slice. Sort of like the difference in price between a dedicated hosted server (the AWS 5G) and a VPS (a slice of the telco's 5G) I'm sure I'm misunderstanding some aspect of this whole thing though.
- ahaseeb 5y ago
  It's actually cheaper if you already have access to cheap broadband such as fibre internet where the GB can be as little as 10 cent/gb. But if you're reselling the telco bandwidth then it doesn't make sense
anon11302100 5y ago
> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. You can already get plans from the existing cellular providers to drop you onto a private secure network that behaves like a VPN though... that's common for people who need secure OOB access to their network gear: but install routers with 3g/4g/LTE expansion cards, get the SIMs on one of these plans, and voila -- OOB remote network access that isn't exposing your devices to the internet
michaelt 5y ago
> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. You can already get this - if you think you need it, you should google 'Private APN'. It's been available for years, assuming you're a corporate user looking for a few hundred SIM cards.
beambot 5y ago
You can take this a step further and make the telecom as a service entirely decentralized: Earn "tokens" by providing wireless area coverage & data backhaul, spend "tokens" to transmit data. This is exactly what the Helium (HNT) project is doing. They started with LoRa coverage (super low datarate but long range for IOT) and are moving into other protocols such as WiFi and CBRS 5G (same as this offering) via the FreedomFi project.
ahaseeb 5y ago
Actually telecom don't have their own infra. They lease the infra from tower companies, here telcos will get hit as well as the tower lease companies About the payment, we're working on a model to compensate the users. Email me if you're interested

ribosometronome 5y ago

Please excuse my vast ignorance but wouldn't Tesla, Uber or whomever need to deploy a massive network of 5g towers for that? Or is more that Tesla/Uber/etc could much more easily become an MVNO-like-provider because of network slicing?

spookthesunset 5y ago
For those at home reading this... MVNO = "Mobile Virtual Network Operator". Aka a network that doesn't have its own wireless infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
The second comment. The telecoms via 5G have been positioning themselves to rent their infrastructure on-demand. The AWS partnership is this but Amazon then re-extending it to developers on their platform as part of their "Cloud" offerings. I doubt Amazon has many towers of their own here and are almost entirely through one of the telecoms.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  But this doesn't use telco towers? Amazon is literally selling antenae.
- thrashh 5y ago
  Isn’t this service nothing related to using existing infrastructure? It looks like Amazon is sending you base stations to set up a private network in one location.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >I doubt Amazon has many towers of their own Their offering page specifically says that AWS "delivers your network hardware (small cell radio base-station and servers) Attach power and internet connectivity to smart cells and servers" They are not using telco partnerships here, or at least if they are, it's not on the level of carving out a chunk of the telco network for private use. I struggle to see how this remains a "cloud" offering rather than a hardware rental.
- hadlock 5y ago
  I think this is more like long haul wifi for your corporate campus, factory, port, university etc. Maybe even for things like parking meters (san francisco's parking meters are famously being updated/upgraded because they're ending EDGE network used by the modems in the parking meters)
foolfoolz 5y ago
at this point these are 2 sides of telecom have nearly evolved to completely separate industries one services towers on the ground. base stations. maintenance. physical network deployment the other is the services of running the network. roaming agreements. customer management. internet breakout tesla and other vehicle makers may see value owning the service side but very unlikely they want to maintain a network

alexatalktome 5y ago

Seems unlikely many firms would want to scale out the hardware of their own network - rented from Amazon no less- instead.

endorphine 5y ago

> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. If that's true, I wonder if this affects Tailscale's business and how.

jauer 5y ago
It's not new. You can get private address space that's routed into your network, but if you trust telco network security, you probably don't have anything worth protecting (or run a VPN over the top and only use the private APN for persistent IP addressing). For example, AT&T's private APN service has been around since the 3G days: https://www.business.att.com/products/private-mobile-connection.html https://www.business.att.com/products/private-mobile-connect...
xuki 5y ago
This requires a physical cell tower and 5G receiver so it’s not as flexible as running a VPN client on your laptop.

colpabar 5y ago

> 5G isn't really like 4G upgraded. It's more its own thing. This is my understanding as well, but I have no idea about any of the details. I know there's something cool about "beams". Do you (or anyone) have a good "entry-level" article/doc that outlines some of the major features that makes it so different than 4G?

ksec 5y ago
Search Massive MIMO, Beamforming ( Which isn't really new ), Small Cells, NR. That is about it really. You can ignore mmWave which is pure hype. Most of the other enhancements are on the carrier / operation side and not consumer. You can also ignore all the 5G Self Driving Vehicle crap.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >5G Self Driving Vehicle crap. I live in a dense suburb of a large city and 5G coverage seems not that great. I'm not sure why self-driving requires or gains much benefit from 5g anyway, but I wouldn't want to rely on it. You can certainly do car-to-car communication & coordination without it, and you wouldn't want a minor network outage turning the system into chaos.
  - ksec 5y ago
    Because certain vendor from certain country have a huge patent portfolio on Autonomous vehicle (AV) and wanted it to rely on 5G so that everything is centralised and could easily be controlled in the name of traffic shaping (cough). And somehow (cough) EU was brought into the whole thing until a Saint appeared, after being banished to hell he finally came back and convinced enough people AV with 5G would need to total state surveillance. I think, if I remember correctly EU finally abandoned that idea. But as with everything it may come back someday. ( Hope not )
    - Talanes 5y ago
      Any reason for the obfuscation?

vineyardmike 5y ago

Huh? This doesn't seem to use AT&T at all, and amazon is actually bringing their own hardware too. This isn't MVNO-aaS. Its Antenae-aaS.

ksec 5y ago
Yes I dont think OP's description is an accurate usage of Private 5G. Where it is aiming at industrial ( warehouse ) or cooperate usage within certain location ( cooperate HQ ). Not sure how Tesla or Uber would get their own private 5G.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
Ah, you're right. I am mistaken for AWS Wavelength.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Hate to be that guy, but... AWS Wavelength is Ec2 instances running on-prem on existing telco locations.
cshipley 5y ago
>This isn't MVNO-aaS. Its Antenae-aaS. I think a lot of people are missing this point. This will not allow someone to become their own carrier. It allows someone to install their own "cell towers" and have devices connect to them without having to use a 3rd party carrier.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Btw, MVNO-aaS does exist (for 5G, too): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_enabler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_enabler
- saltminer 5y ago
  Yeah, while you might theoretically be able to build a national 5G network using this, it would be way more expensive vs just building it yourself. Amazon wouldn't be marketing this if they didn't expect to have a healthy profit margin, after all. This seems more applicable in cases where you need 5G but there is no/insufficient 5G already, when it would be prohibitively expensive to go to existing carriers (mobile data rates in the US are ridiculous), or when the threat model necessitates a private network.

reaperducer 5y ago

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. So like WhisperNet, except 5G, and anyone can make their own?

danudey 5y ago

None of this is really what this service is intended for. If you read the whitepaper, they list examples of what this would be useful for; namely, covering your own space with your own 5G for your own devices. Deploy it in these areas instead of WiFi: 1. A stadium's remote ad/video/informational displays 2. A logistics distribution hub's stock-tracking robots/systems/handhelds 3. A corporate campus's smart displays or door access systems 4. Oil and gas drilling/processing sites's systems monitoring in remote, non-covered areas So this isn't about creating a new provider in your local city, but rather about connecting your devices in your space in cases where WiFi is insufficient or overloaded.

blowski 5y ago
Is there any reason it _couldn't_ become that?
- hattmall 5y ago
  Probably not, except cost. It would be too expensive to compete with the national providers and then you would still need to interface with them for any service outside of the city. It's possible, just not the intended use case and not a logical use.
  - blowski 5y ago
    I remember people making very similar claims about AWS EC2 in 2007.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Ah, so the mythical beast of future Amazon 5G use cases can be anything I want then, right? How about unicorns? I see what you’re saying, but just because a similar statement was made about another service, does not mean the outcome will be the same in this instance with vastly different dynamics at play.
- Melkman 5y ago

ineedasername 5y ago

>Uber offering free fast Internet to their drivers Amazon is talking about installing actual local hardware infrastructure here though. It seems like that only makes sense where there is no existing 5G, otherwise it's probably just cheaper to use the telco's infrastructure since, as you said, they could work directly with the telco to get their own slice. Sort of like the difference in price between a dedicated hosted server (the AWS 5G) and a VPS (a slice of the telco's 5G) I'm sure I'm misunderstanding some aspect of this whole thing though.

ahaseeb 5y ago
It's actually cheaper if you already have access to cheap broadband such as fibre internet where the GB can be as little as 10 cent/gb. But if you're reselling the telco bandwidth then it doesn't make sense

anon11302100 5y ago

> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. You can already get plans from the existing cellular providers to drop you onto a private secure network that behaves like a VPN though... that's common for people who need secure OOB access to their network gear: but install routers with 3g/4g/LTE expansion cards, get the SIMs on one of these plans, and voila -- OOB remote network access that isn't exposing your devices to the internet

michaelt 5y ago

> This could be extremely useful for security. Maybe even the death of VPNs. You can already get this - if you think you need it, you should google 'Private APN'. It's been available for years, assuming you're a corporate user looking for a few hundred SIM cards.

beambot 5y ago

You can take this a step further and make the telecom as a service entirely decentralized: Earn "tokens" by providing wireless area coverage & data backhaul, spend "tokens" to transmit data. This is exactly what the Helium (HNT) project is doing. They started with LoRa coverage (super low datarate but long range for IOT) and are moving into other protocols such as WiFi and CBRS 5G (same as this offering) via the FreedomFi project.

ahaseeb 5y ago

Actually telecom don't have their own infra. They lease the infra from tower companies, here telcos will get hit as well as the tower lease companies About the payment, we're working on a model to compensate the users. Email me if you're interested