Akihabara News (Tokyo) — On December 16, KDDI deployed Japan’s first “Wavelength Zone” in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
A Wavelength Zone is an infrastructure offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) which now puts special computational and data storage services on the edges of au’s 5G network, offering ultra-low latency (i.e. very fast) application traffic.
Although increased bandwidth and lower latency are key advantages of 5G over its predecessors, this really only applies to the functionality of its wireless component. The true power of 5G cannot be unlocked until the response time of the internet component is also boosted. The creation of the Wavelength Zone is a significant step in this direction, putting computational and storage services closer to the end users without leaving KDDI’s telecommunications network.
KDDI expects that with the boost from the Wavelength Zone, latency within its Tokyo 5G network will be less than half of that in its 4G network.
This development of “mobile edge computing” is anticipated to be critical for the future provision of services such as autonomous driving, streaming 4K or 8K video, virtual reality, and better performance within multi-player video games.
Similar services have already been rolled out by AWS in several US cities.
