April 2024

5G Standalone

Global Status Update

Operators are increasingly experimenting with and deploying The technology is expected to enable customisation and open
5G standalone access (SA) networks. With a new, cloud-based, up new service and revenue opportunities tailored to enterprise,
virtualised, microservices-based core infrastructure, expected 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 2024 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | April 2024 | 1
Investment in 5G SA by Public and Private Network Operators
5G SA networks can be deployed in a variety Figure 1. Number of operators investing in 5G SA for public networks and number
of scenarios: as an overlay for a public 5G non- investing in any 3GPP 5G network

SA network, as a greenfield 5G deployment

for a public network operator without 5G 5G SA

a separate LTE network, or as a private

network deployment for an enterprise, utility, 578 582 588
515 524 535
education, government or other organisation 491 496 505
464 481
453
requiring a private campus network. 412 428
402
GSA has identified 124 operators in 58
countries and territories worldwide
that have been investing in public 5G
108 111 112 115 115 121 121 124
SA networks through trials, planned or 82 89 99 102
52 61 68
actual deployments (see Figure 1). This
equates to 21% of the 588 operators known
3Q20 4Q20 1Q21 2Q21 3Q21 4Q21 1Q22 2Q22 3Q22 4Q22 1Q23 2Q23 3Q23 4Q23 1Q24
to be investing in 5G licences, trials or
deployments of any type.

At least 49 operators in 29 countries and

Figure 2. Countries and territories with operators identified as investing in public 5G SA
territories are now understood to have
networks
launched or deployed public 5G SA networks,
one of which has only soft-launched their 5G
SA networks (see Figure 2).

In addition to these, 22 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 2024
and beyond, following the launch of the
technology in markets such as the United
Kingdom.

In addition to the investment in 5G SA for

Powered by Bing
public mobile networks mentioned above, © Australian Bureau of Statistics, GeoNames, Microsoft, Navinfo, OpenStreetMap, TomTom, Zenrin

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 January 2024, it
had collated information about 1,384
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 network
so far.
Of those, 643 are known to be using 5G
networks (excluding those labelled as
5G-ready) for private mobile network
pilots or deployments. Of those, 71
(just over 11% of them) are 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.

© Copyright 2024 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | April 2024 | 2
5G Devices Figure 3. Announced and commercially available 5G devices with stated 5G SA support

GSA tracks the availability of 5G devices

All announced 5G devices Announced 5G SA devices Commercial 5G SA devices
for end users in its GAMBoD database.
With 5G SA networks continuing to be
3,000
launched globally, it is already aware of 1,764
2,500
announced devices with claimed support
for 5G SA, up 43.7% from 1,227 at the end 2,000

of 2022. Of those, 1,535 devices are already 1,500

commercially available, up 41.2% from 1,087
1,000
at the end of 2022 (see Figure 3).*
500
The number of 5G SA devices as a
0
percentage of all 5G devices announced Dec Mar Jun Sep Dec Mar Jun Sep Dec Mar Jun Sep Dec Mar
has been steadily climbing. They accounted 20 21 21 21 21 22 22 22 22 23 23 23 23 24
for 43.3% of 5G devices in December 2019,
57.9% in December 2020, 60.7% in December
Figure 4. Announced 5G devices with stated 5G SA support, by form factor
2021 and 68.3% in December 2022. As of the
end of March 2024, they account for 68.1%. Other
Battery-operated hot spot
7%
2%
Software upgrades are often needed to
Industrial
enable 5G SA capability for existing 5G
router/gateway/modem
devices. 6%

There is a range of form factors to cater Module

for different users, including modules for 11%
equipment manufacturers and vendors;
customer-premises equipment (CPE), routers Phone
61%
and gateways for enterprise or industrial Fixed wireless access CPE
customers or their systems integrators; CPE 13%
for home and business broadband; phones;
and battery-operated hot spots for portable
services. This is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 5. Commercially available 5G devices with stated 5G SA support, by form factor
Phones make up over half (61.1%) of the
announced 5G devices with stated 5G SA Battery-operated hot spot Other
support (1,084 phones), followed by fixed 2% 8%
Industrial
wireless access CPE (229) and modules (198).
CPE/router/gateway/
modem
Looking solely at devices that are now
6%
commercially available (see Figure 5), phones Module
account for an even larger proportion, 9%
at 64.2% (986 phones), followed by fixed
wireless access equipment (170 devices) and
modules (142 devices). A total of 160 vendors Fixed wireless access CPE
11% Phone
have commercial 5G devices for SA networks
64%
and another 171 have announced devices.

* Restatement of figures following re-evaluation of data through GAMBoD

© Copyright 2024 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | April 2024 | 3
Chipset and Device Figure 6. Sub-6 GHz support by band, announced 5G SA devices, most-supported bands
Vendors
n78 1,484
The device ecosystem is underpinned by 97
n41 1,454
announced modems or mobile processors/
n1 1,332
platform chipsets stating support 5G
n77 1,264
SA, from six vendors. Of those, 93 are
n28 1,198
understood to be commercially available,
n3 1,138
including 15 discrete modems, 75 mobile
n5 1,044
processors and platforms and two Internet
n8 994
of things chipsets. (Note: GSA only counts
n7 826
chipsets available for purchase by third
n38 804
parties and does not count in-house
n40 717
developed chipsets not offered for external
n79 712
sale.)
n20 705
GSA has identified 45 chipsets announced n2 488
as supporting 5G carrier aggregation of n66 470

some sort. This feature will be important in n12 402

encouraging widespread adoption of 5G SA n71 401

services. n25 364

Spectrum Support in
Devices
Selected sub-6 GHz frequencies are
increasingly well supported in 5G SA devices.
The pattern of most-supported bands in
sub-6 GHz 5G SA devices largely matches the
pattern for most-supported bands across all
5G devices, with C-band, 2.6 GHz, 2 GHz, 1.8
GHz and 700 MHz known to be catered for
by most devices. This is shown in Figure 6.
n48 307
Support for millimetre wave is not yet
common. Chipsets are being developed to
support this capability — GSA has currently
only catalogued eight chipsets specifically
supporting 5G SA in millimetre-wave
spectrum (eight mobile processors and
platforms).
We can expect support for spectrum bands
above 6 GHz to increase in the future,
as these bands are being promoted as
an option for deployment of private 5G
networks by regulators in various countries,
as well as being promoted as capacity bands
for high-traffic locations in public networks.

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 months 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.

Members can access a list of operators investing in public 5G SA networks in the annex.

© Copyright 2024 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | April 2024 | 4
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