GSA reports that 115 mobile operators are now investing in 5G Standalone technology, representing 21.4% of the 535 operators known to be investing in 5G licences, trials or deployments of any type.
In addition to the investment in 5G SA for public mobile networks, GSA is also tracking organizations testing, piloting or deploying 5G SA technologies for private networks. As of the last update in May 2023, GSA had collated information about 1,148 organisations known to be deploying or granted a licence for LTE or 5G private mobile networks. Of those, 505 are known to be using 5G networks for private mobile networks, with 66 (just over 13% of them) known to be working with 5G SA already. They include manufacturers, academic organisations, commercial research institutes, construction, communications and IT services, rail and aviation organisations. The private mobile networks database is available to GSA Members and Associates.
“Operators are increasingly testing and deploying 5G standalone networks,” said Joe Barrett, President, Global mobile Suppliers Association. “With a totally new, cloud-based, virtualised, microservices-based core infrastructure, 5G SA brings benefits including lower latency, support for massive numbers of devices, and programmable systems enabling faster and more-agile creation of services and network slices. As the momentum behind 5G SA networks and devices continues, we can expect to see more operators deploying the new services they enable such as voice over New Radio.”
