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Some 37% of mobile operators expect to begin deploying 5G SA within the next two years, according to survey results released earlier this month by 5G technology provider Enea. The survey showed that 27% of operators planned to deploy 5G SA within 12-18 months with a further 10% within 24 months.
Most operators, including those in the U.S., chose to launch 5G services using the Non-Standalone (NSA) version of the standard, which uses LTE in the core network and enabled them to get out there faster with 5G. 3GPP defined the 5G SA network in Release 15.
The SA version, which does not rely on LTE, allows an operator to address not just enhanced mobile broadband, but massive machine-to-machine communications, or massive IoT, and ultra low latency communications. It also allows for more advanced network slicing activities.

With SA, the operator transitions to both 5G New Radio (NR) and 5G as the core network. “To reach the full potential of 5G and where we want to go as an industry, you’re going to want to transition at some point to New Radio and 5G core network,”

Now that the industry has had 5G for a while, the question is how to transition to full SA. “I think how fast the transition will happen is going to depend largely on the spectrum assets that each operator has,” said Alejandro Holcman, senior vice president, Corporate Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies. “It really goes on a case-by-case scenario.”

An operator with a significant amount of lower-band spectrum that can be dedicated to 5G would have an easier time going to SA for coverage reasons. The transition will be a lot easier if the operator doesn’t have to vacate 4G spectrum for 5G; in some cases, operators will be relying on dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), and to be clear, an operator can use DSS with an NSA network as well.

The bigger changes on the device side come next year, when devices using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X60 system are expected to come to market. The X60 can handle the millimeter wave and sub-6 GHz bands on Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) and Time Division Duplexing (TDD) networks. The system also supports millimeter wave sub-6 GHz carrier aggregation.