October 2023

5G Standalone

Global Status Update

Operators are increasingly experimenting with and deploying The technology is expected to enable customisation and open
5G standalone (SA) networks. With a totally new, cloud-based, up new service and revenue opportunities tailored to enterprise,
virtualised, microservices-based core infrastructure, anticipated industrial and government customers.
benefits of 5G SA technologies include faster connection
GSA is tracking the emergence of the 5G SA system, including the
times (lower latency), support for massive numbers of devices,
availability of chipsets and devices for customers, plus the testing
programmable systems enabling faster and more-agile creation of
and deployment of 5G SA networks by public mobile network
services and network slices, with improved support for management
operators as well as private network operators.
of service-level agreements within those slices, and the advent of
voice over New Radio (VoNR) technology. This report is the latest in an ongoing series summarising market
trends, drawing on data collected in GSA’s various databases
The introduction of 5G SA is expected to facilitate simplification of
covering chipsets, devices, spectrum and networks.
architectures, improve security and reduce costs.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | October 2023 | 1
Investment in 5G SA by Public and Private Network Operators
5G SA networks can be deployed in a Figure 1. Number of operators investing in 5G SA for public networks and number
variety of scenarios: as an overlay for a investing in any 3GPP 5G network

public 5G non-SA network, as a greenfield

5G deployment for a public network 5G 5G SA

operator without a separate LTE network,

or as a private network deployment for an 578
enterprise, utility, education, government or 515 524 535
481 491 496 505
other organisation requiring its own private 453 464
412 428
campus network. 381 388 402
328 348
GSA has identified 121 operators in 55
235
countries and territories worldwide that have 182 201
134 154
been investing in public 5G SA networks 108 111112 115 115121
82 89 99 102
in the form of trials, planned or actual 52 61 68

deployments (see Figure 1). This equates

to 20.9% of the 578 operators known to be
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3Q19
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1Q21
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investing in 5G licences, trials or deployments
of any type.
Figure 2. Countries and territories with operators identified as investing in public 5G SA
At least 47 operators in 27 countries and
networks
territories are now understood to have
launched or deployed public 5G SA networks,
two of which have only soft-launched their 5G
SA networks (see Figure 2).

In addition to these, 21 operators have been

catalogued as deploying or piloting 5G SA
for public networks, and 49 as planning to
deploy or evaluating, testing or trialling the
technology, showing that launches of 5G SA
look set to continue apace.

In addition to the investment in 5G SA for

public mobile networks mentioned above,
several organisations are testing, piloting
or deploying 5G SA technologies for private
networks. GSA has developed a database that
tracks private mobile network licences, trials
and deployments.
As of the last update in July 2023, it
had collated information about 1,148
organisations known to be deploying LTE
or 5G private mobile networks, or known
to have been granted a licence suitable
for the deployment of a private LTE or 5G
Powered by Bing
© Australian Bureau of Sta�s�cs, GeoNames, Microso�, Navinfo, OpenStreetMap, TomTom, Zenrin
network so far. Of those, 505 are known communications and IT services, rail and
to be using 5G networks (excluding those aviation organisations.
labelled as 5G-ready) for private mobile
The private mobile networks database is
network pilots or deployments. Of those,
available to GSA members and associates.
66 (just over 13% of them) are known to be
working with 5G SA already. They include
manufacturers, academic organisations,
commercial research institutes, construction,

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | October 2023 | 1
5G Devices Figure 3. Announced and commercially available 5G devices with stated 5G SA support

GSA tracks the availability of 5G devices for All announced 5G devices Announced 5G SA devices Commercial 5G SA devices
end users in its GAMBoD database. With 5G
SA networks just beginning to be launched, it 2,500
is already aware of 2,005 announced devices
2,000
with claimed support for 5G SA, up 192.2%
from 686 at the end of 2021. Of those, 1,736 1,500
devices are already commercially available,
1,000
up 232.2% from 522 at the end of 2021 (see
Figure 3). 500

The number of 5G SA devices as a 0

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percentage of all 5G devices announced
has been steadily climbing. They accounted
for 35.6% of 5G devices in December 2019,
49.7% in December 2020 and 54.6% in Figure 4. Announced 5G devices with stated 5G SA support, by form factor
December 2021 and a large increase to
Battery-operated Other
81.8% in December 2022. As of October
hot spot 7%
2023, they account for 90.2%. 2%
Industrial
Software upgrades are often needed to router/gateway/modem
enable 5G SA capability for existing 5G 5%
devices.
Module
There is a range of form factors to cater 13%
for different users, including modules for
equipment manufacturers and vendors; Phone
customer-premises equipment (CPE), routers 60%

and gateways for enterprise or industrial Fixed wireless access CPE

13%
customers or their systems integrators; CPE
for home and business broadband; phones;
and battery-operated hot spots for portable
Figure 5. Commercially available 5G devices with stated 5G SA support, by form factor
services. This is shown in Figure 4.
Battery-operated
Phones make up over half (60.0%) of the Other
Industrial hot spot
announced 5G devices with stated 5G SA 7%
CPE/router/gateway/ 2%
support (1,206 phones), followed by fixed modem
wireless access CPE (265) and modules (250). 5%

Looking solely at devices that are now Module

commercially available (see Figure 5), phones 11%
account for an even larger proportion, at
63.4% (1,102 phones), followed by fixed
wireless access equipment (208 devices) and
modules (190 devices). A total of 144 vendors Fixed wireless access CPE
12% Phone
have commercial 5G devices for SA networks 63%
and another 115 have announced devices.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | October 2023 | 2
Chipset and Device Figure 6. Sub-6 GHz support by band, announced 5G SA devices, most-supported bands
Vendors
n78 1,704
The device ecosystem is supported by 89 n41 1,678
announced modems or mobile processors/ n1 1,531
n77 1,462
platform chipsets stated to support 5G
n28 1,380
SA, from six vendors. Of those, 86 are n3 1,300
understood to be commercially available, n5 1,212
including 15 discrete modems, 71 mobile n8 1,139
n7 985
processors and platforms and two Internet
n38 971
of things chipsets. (Note: GSA only counts n79 805
chipsets available for purchase by third n40 861
parties and does not count in-house n20 842
n2 609
developed chipsets not offered for external
n12 511
sale.) n71 490
n66 511
GSA has identified 42 chipsets announced
n25 470
as supporting 5G carrier aggregation of n48 382
some sort. This feature will be important in
encouraging widespread adoption of 5G SA
services.

Spectrum Support in
by most devices. This is shown in Figure 6.
Devices We can expect support for spectrum bands

Support for millimetre wave is not yet above 6 GHz to increase in the future,
Selected sub-6 GHz frequencies are
common. Chipsets are being developed to as these bands are being promoted as
increasingly well supported in 5G SA devices.
support this capability — GSA has currently an option for deployment of private 5G
The pattern of most-supported bands in
only catalogued eight chipsets specifically networks by regulators in various countries,
sub-6 GHz 5G SA devices largely matches the
supporting 5G SA in millimetre-wave as well as being promoted as capacity bands
pattern for most-supported bands across all
spectrum (eight mobile processors and for high-traffic locations in public networks.
5G devices, with C-band, 2.6 GHz, 2 GHz, 1.8
platforms).
GHz and 700 MHz known to be catered for

Summary
The market is seeing the emergence of a strong 5G SA ecosystem with chipsets, devices of many types and users of public as well as
private networks. We can expect to see the market go from strength to strength. As it does, GSA will continue to track its evolution
and will be looking out for important new trends as they emerge.

Topics likely to become more important in the coming year in this context include 5G carrier aggregation in SA networks, ultrareliable
low-latency communications capabilities to support machine-to-machine connections in 5G SA systems, increasing support for
millimetre-wave connections, network slicing in 5G networks and the introduction of VoNR in 5G SA networks.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | October 2023 | 3
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© Global mobile Suppliers Association. 2023