AWS Wavelength
An infrastructure service that places compute and storage at the edge of 5G carrier networks to enable ultra-low latency applications
Overview
AWS Wavelength places AWS compute resources directly inside telecommunications carriers' 5G networks. Because mobile device traffic is processed within the carrier network without traversing the public internet, it achieves single-digit millisecond latency. Wavelength Zones extend a standard AWS Region's VPC, allowing you to deploy existing services like EC2, ECS, and EKS as-is. In Japan, Wavelength Zones are available in Tokyo and Osaka through a partnership with KDDI, supporting ultra-low latency use cases such as AR/VR, real-time gaming, and industrial IoT.
Carrier Integration and Network Architecture
A Wavelength Zone is AWS infrastructure installed within a telecommunications carrier's data center. Unlike standard Availability Zones, it is positioned on a network path directly reachable from the carrier's 5G base stations. Packets from mobile devices reach the Wavelength Zone within the carrier's 5G core network, eliminating hops to the public internet. This architecture reduces the 50-100 ms internet-traversal latency that was unavoidable with traditional cloud to under 10 ms. A Wavelength Zone connects to the parent Region's VPC through a Carrier Gateway. The Carrier Gateway serves as the traffic entry and exit point with the carrier network and is managed as a separate resource from the Internet Gateway. Carrier IP addresses are special Elastic IPs routable only within the carrier network and are not directly reachable from the internet. The recommended design delegates backend processing and data persistence to parent Region services (DynamoDB, S3, RDS, etc.) and places only latency-sensitive frontend processing in the Wavelength Zone.
Application Deployment and Subnet Design
Deploying to a Wavelength Zone involves adding a carrier subnet to an existing VPC. First, opt in to the Wavelength Zone, then create a subnet within the VPC specifying the Wavelength Zone. Configure the subnet's route table with a default route to the Carrier Gateway to establish the communication path to the carrier network. Assigning a Carrier IP to EC2 instances enables direct access from 5G devices. ECS and EKS worker nodes can also be placed in Wavelength subnets, serving container-based microservices at low latency. Note that available instance types in Wavelength Zones are limited to a subset including t3.medium, t3.xlarge, r5.2xlarge, and g4dn.2xlarge. The availability of GPU instances (g4dn) enables edge inference workloads. EBS volumes support only gp2; gp3 and io2 are not available. ALB and NLB cannot be placed within a Wavelength Zone, so traffic distribution requires application-level solutions.
5G Use Cases and Pricing Model
Wavelength's primary use cases are in domains where latency directly impacts experience quality. In AR/VR applications, head-tracking delays exceeding 20 ms cause motion sickness, making Wavelength's edge processing highly effective. In cloud gaming, it minimizes the delay from input to frame rendering, maintaining a real-time feel. In industrial IoT, control signals for factory robotic arms and automated guided vehicles are processed at low latency, balancing safety and productivity. For autonomous driving assistance systems, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication data is aggregated and analyzed in the Wavelength Zone to deliver real-time traffic conditions. For a deeper understanding of 5G and edge computing architectures, books on 5G (Amazon) are a great resource. The pricing model includes hourly EC2 instance charges plus data transfer fees from the Wavelength Zone. Data transfer from a Wavelength Zone to the parent Region is priced equivalently to inter-AZ transfer. Data transfer to the carrier network incurs carrier data transfer charges that vary by region. Communication between instances within the same Wavelength Zone is free. The key to cost optimization is minimizing the components placed at the edge and delegating heavy processing to the parent Region.