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Comment by ethanpil | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this is a product that was built on top of something they needed to use internally. Makes me wonder how Amazon is using this technology for themselves... Anyone care to speculate?

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I would guess it's more aimed at use in large factories, warehouses and yards, where WiFi is not going to be practical.

I did a stint as a (software) architect for a large Norwegian engineering company, and at the time they were looking at getting a private 4G network setup, as their facilities were absolutely huge. I did a little research, and quite a few mobile operators actually offer private 4G networks for exactly this use case.

Could you explain what makes this tech better than Wifi? Does it have better range/deal with interference better?

My impression was that the high speed profile of 5G was basically the same as that of Wifi, with exactly the same issues. Am I wrong/is it better in lower speed modes?

Here are the key differences between 5G and Wifi: 1. Dedicated vs shared spectrum. Though all big countries have shared spectrum initiatives for 5G too but it is still not a free for all like Wifi. So interference-wise 5G might be better for some use cases. Have heard about that in several shipping ports where Private 5G is deployed 2. Security. Due to the usage of SIM but Wifi security is good too 3. Range - though most of 5G is in comparable frequency ranges with Wifi, there is a huge range of powers at which 5G base stations can transmit so range is possibly larger for 5G

But it all depends on use-case and there is no clear winner for all situations.

You could imagine them using it in their warehouses. I imagine getting good coverage with wifi in a huge warehouse could be pretty expensive, maybe 4G/5G works better?

I see a potential use of it from IoT devices. An eg. a tractor wants to communicate with a central server for commands.

I fear what this means in larger scale. All Amazon manufactured physical IoT and hardware could have sidechannel in the future to escape network isolation. They already have this "feature" which expands your home network for neighbor Amazon devices if they need Internet access. And default setting is "ON", not off. How many consumer is aware of that?

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b/?node=21328123011

It's worth noting that the behavior of Amazon with its commodity consumer products has been notably different than AWS with its customers. The stain on reputation if AWS were to, say, mine data from private S3 buckets would be very hard to remove.

This capability is considered in the design of 5G, see NB-IoT and LTE-M

Why would you buy a consumer IoT product and not connect it to the internet? If you’re the kind of person who fears that, you’re probably not the person who uses something like Alexa and smart home stuff.

If the device has not easily removable battery, it starts to be impossible to tell when it collects the data and shares it. Many devices are useful in the local network only, but still they want all-time internet access without real need. Using direct 5G links make it also harder to filter traffic. I don't know, I just don't like the idea that all information must be collected by any means.

> Many devices are useful in the local network only

no amazon-made device is local only.

> I just don't like the idea that all information must be collected by any means.

I agree with your sentiment, but most devices don't really have access to much data of concern. I'd be more worried 5g bullshit is used in screens that can send ads over a smart bulb or something.

You describe a great use case for LoRaWAN:

  https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan/

One of the podcasts I listen to had AT&T as their sponsor and they would talk about using IoT to make factories and warehouses "smart", so it's possible amazon uses this in their warehouses instead of wifi to connect to the bots and hand terminals.

No internal use. This is a hype driven white labeling.

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