AWS Local Zones cut latency from 200ms to 5ms for Latin American apps

Applications hosted in US-based AWS regions like us-east-1 can suffer 150–200ms latency for users in cities such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, or Bogotá, which directly impacts revenue, user retention, and transaction success rates. AWS offers a layered infrastructure spectrum — including Local Zones, Wavelength, and Outposts — designed to bring compute closer to end users without replacing the core region. AWS Local Zones, now expanding across Latin America, are extensions of existing regions connected via AWS's private network, reducing latency to as low as 5–10ms for latency-sensitive workloads. Industries such as fintech, gaming, streaming, and industrial IoT stand to benefit most, as real-time fraud detection and competitive gaming both require sub-20ms processing. The recommended architecture is selective — latency-sensitive components run in the Local Zone while storage, analytics, and backups remain in the main region.