COVID-19 has canceled the live sporting experience for most of the world. Now, whether the virus is vanquished or not, watching the game real-time in virtual reality could replace trips to the stadium for good.

“[There’s] a customer that’s working on Wavelength today to deliver a full 360-degree video of sports events. It’s like you’re there,” said George Elissaios (pictured), general manager and director of product management at Amazon Web Services Inc.

Elissaios spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how AWS Wavelength is enabling IoT use cases in communities across the globe. (* Disclosure below.)

AWS cloud services enable the full potential of 5G

AWS Wavelength is the AWS technology that is making the immersive live sports experience possible. By delivering AWS services at the very edge of the 5G network, Wavelength allows AWS customers and developers to reach their own end users with very low latency, according to Elissaios.

While live streamed VR sports are something to look forward to as we’re stranded in our homes as a result of the pandemic, use cases are not limited to entertainment. Industrial automation, healthcare internet of things, smart cities and connected vehicles are among the hundreds of applications Wavelength is enabling.

“[Customers] love that they can use the same AWS APIs and tools and services that they use today in their region to get their hands on these new capabilities,” Elissaios said.

Boston and the Bay Area were the first locations to benefit from Wavelength, which launched in summer 2020.

“Since then we’ve seen we’ve been growing with Verizon, our 5G partner in the U.S., and increasing that coverage in multiple of the larger U.S. cities, including Miami, D.C. and New York,” Elissaios stated.

AWS re:Invent 2020 saw the announcement of Wavelength in Las Vegas, and the global footprint is expanding through collaborations with Japanese telecom KDDI Corp., SK Telecom Ltd. in South Korea, and British Vodaphone Group PLC.

“We’re trying to enable our customers to reach their end users with low latency and great performance, wherever those end users are and whatever network they’re using to get connected, whether that’s the 5G mobile network, whether it’s the Internet or an IoT network,” Elissaios concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE