The digitized business requirements that are prompting connection of ever-increasing masses of sensors and devices, along with the headache of physically running cables around premises, are some of the reasons Amazon Web Services Inc. has announced its Private 5G product for customers.

Convention centers, campuses and manufacturing floors in the hundreds-of-thousands of square feet could be covered by the low-latency, high-reliability radio technology, according to an Amazon executive.

“Customers try to use Wi-Fi , but as the number of devices grows into the thousands and you need to put more and more data around, you quickly reach the limitations,” said George Elissaios (pictured), director of product management at AWS.

Elissaios spoke with John Furrier and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the advantages of its Private 5G network. (* Disclosure below.)

‘Just plug it in’

Amazon’s system, modeled on the equipment already used in Amazon fulfilment warehouses, consists of radio access points that connect with cabling to the customer’s internet. The access points are small cells, functioning using 5G radio technology, similar to what you’d see in a telco environment. Each cell can cover thousands of feet, the product executive explained.

“AWS will build a plan for your network and ship you everything that you need; just plug it together, turn it on, and the network automatically configures itself,” Elissaios said of the first product phase. “All you’ve got to do is pop your SIM cards that we sent you into your mobile devices and you have a private 5G network working on your premises.”

The AWS Private 5G network leverages the open Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), or customers can bring bring their own licenses.

Enterprises of all types, and in particular manufacturing and public telcos, have recently been expressing interest in moving away from Wi-Fi to private 5G partly because they get to control and beef-up the security aspects, according to Elissaios

“Wi-Fi does not provide you the depth of capabilities like advanced security,” he said.

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