Eli5: difference between usual 5g/cell network and a cloud based 5g network? Read an article about this being a new thing, but I don’t even understand why it was so revolutionary
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I read some articles and they are thick with jargon. I could be wrong but I’m sure someone will correct me.
It seems you read about a “cloud-native 5G network”. Here’s what I understand.
You can build a 5G network using some of the concepts and equipment used for 4G LTE networks. If you do that, adding new towers and other various needed equipment is done manually. You have to turn on everything, write down its details, then go through a process where you tell the rest of the network about the new tower and equipment so they know to cooperate with each other.
The concept of a “cloud-native 5G network” is one where you’d just turn on the tower, it’d find the rest of your towers, then they’d do a little back-and-forth conversation and accept each other. The “cloud” part is in reference to how if you already have some Amazon devices, when you buy a new one it’s relatively easy to add it to your network by getting it to talk to Amazon to learn about your network instead of having to manually enter a lot of information.
It seems like there are some interesting aspects of this design that might let people set up their own private 5G networks that aren’t part of the cellular network. That’d be cool for places like large factories that need dozens if not hundreds of miles of cable to support their network infrastructure. If it were easy for them to set up a private 5G network they might save a lot of money on network maintenance.
But it seems rollout is kind of slow because this network equipment can’t perform as both a 5G and LTE network. A lot of people are still using LTE, so cell providers don’t want to get rid of their LTE infrastructure just yet. But it seems some providers have decided to dive in and invest ONLY in this kind of network, hoping it gives them an advantage.
I think you need to link the article maybe in the comments. Generally speaking cell service is provided by cell towers, not from satellites. Then there is star link which is from a satellite. Perhaps it is a mix up here.
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