Did you see the big announcement from AWS re:Invent that Amazon has a preview of a Private 5G service? It probably got buried under the 200 other announcements that came out on so many other things so I’ll forgive you for missing it. Especially if you also managed to miss a few of the “hot takes” that mentioned how Amazon was trying to become a cellular provider. If I rolled my eyes any harder I might have caused permanent damage. Leave it to the professionals to screw up what seems to be the most cut-and-dried case of not reading the room.

Amazon doesn’t care about providing mobile service. How in the hell did we already forget about the Amazon (dumpster) Fire Phone? Amazon isn’t trying to supplant AT&T or Verizon. They are trying to provide additional connectivity for their IoT devices. It’s about as clear as it can get.

Remember all the flap about Amazon Sidewalk? How IoT devices were going to use 900 MHz to connect to each other if they had no other connectivity? Well, now it doesn’t matter because as long as one speaker or doorbell has a SIM slot for a private 5G or CBRS node then everything else can connect to it too. Who’s to say they aren’t going to start putting those slots in everything going forward? I’d be willing to bet the farm that they are. It’s cheap compared to upgrading everything to use 802.11ax radios or 6 GHz technology. And the benefits for Amazon are legion.

It’s Your Density

Have you ever designed a wireless network for a high-density deployment? Like a stadium or a lecture hall? The needs of your infrastructure look radically different compared to your home. You’re not planning for a couple of devices in a few dozen square feet. You’re thinking about dozens or even hundreds of devices in the most cramped space possible. To say that a stadium is one of the most hostile environments out there is underselling both the rabid loyalty of your average fan and the wireless airspace they’re using to post about how the other team sucks.

You know who does have a lot of experience designing high density deployments with hundreds of devices? Cellular and mobile providers. That’s because those devices were designed from the start to be more agreeable to hostile environments and have higher density deployments. Anyone that can think back to the halcyon days of 3G and how crazy it got when you went to Cisco Live and had no cell coverage in the hotel until you got to the wireless network in the convention center may disagree with me. But that exact scenario is why providers started focusing more on the number of deployed devices instead of the total throughput of the tower. It was more important in the long run to get devices connected at lower data rates than it was to pump up the wattage and get a few devices to shine at the expense of all the other ones that couldn’t get connected.

In today’s 5G landscape, it’s all about the clients. High density and good throughput. And that’s for devices with a human attached to them. Sure, we all carry a mobile phone and a laptop and maybe a tablet that are all connected to the Wi-Fi network. With IoT, the game changes significantly. Even in your consumer-focused IoT landscape you can probably think of ten devices around you right now that are connected to the network, from garage door openers to thermostats to light switches or light bulbs.

IoT at Work

In the enterprise it’s going to get crazy with industrial and operational IoT. Every building is going to have sensors packed all over the place. Temperature, humidity, occupancy, and more are going to be little tags on the walls sampling data and feeding it back to the system dashboard. Every piece of equipment you use on a factory floor is going to be connected, either by default with upgrade kits or with add-on networking gear that provides an interface to the control system. If it can talk to the Internet it’s going to be enabled to do it. And that’s going to crush your average Wi-Fi network unless you build it like a stadium.

On the other hand, private 5G and private LTE deployments are built for this scale. And because they’re lightly regulated compared to full-on provider setups you can do them easily without causing interference. As long as someone that owns a license for your frequency isn’t nearby you can just set things up and get moving. And as soon as you order the devices that have SIM slots you can plug in your cards and off you go!

I wouldn’t be shocked to see Amazon start offering a “new” lineup of enterprise-ready IoT devices with pre-installed SIMs for Amazon Private 5G service. Just buy these infrastructure devices from us and click the button on your AWS dashboard and you can have on-prem 5G. Hell, call it Network Outpost or something. Just install it and pay us and we’ll take care of the rest for you. And as soon as they get you locked in to their services they’ve got you hooked. Because if you’re already using those devices with 5G, why would you want to go through the pain on configuring them for the Wi-Fi?

This isn’t a play for consumers. Configuring a consumer-grade Wi-Fi router from a big box store is one thing. Private 5G is beyond most people, even if it’s a managed service. It also offers no advantages for Amazon. Because private 5G in the consumer space is just like hardware sales. Customers aren’t going to buy features as much as they’re shopping for the lowest sticker price. In the enterprise, Amazon can attach private 5G service to existing cloud spend and make a fortune while at the same time ensuring their IoT devices are connected at all times and possibly even streaming telemetry and collecting anonymized data, depending on how the operations contracts are written. But that’s a whole different mess of data privacy.

Tom’s Take

I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it until we finally get the picture: IoT and 5G are now joined at the hip and will continue to grow together in the enterprise. Anyone out there that sees IoT as a hobby for home automation or sees 5G as a mere mobile phone feature will be enjoying their Betamax movies along with web apps on their mobile phones. This is bigger than the consumer space. The number of companies that are jumping into the private 5G arena should prove the smoke is hiding a fire that can signal that Gondor is calling for aid. It’s time you get on board with IoT and 5G and see that. The future isn’t a thick client with a Wi-Fi stack that you need to configure. It’s a small sensor with a SIM slot running on a private network someone else fixes for you. Are you down with that?