T-Mobile claims it is the first telecom to launch a commercial 5G nationwide standalone network, expanding its 5G footprint to 2,000 additional cities and towns in the U.S.
Standalone 5G uses new infrastructure put in place specifically to run 5G networks allowing smart devices and other potential use cases to take advantage of the high download speed, high bandwidth and low latency that the technology affords. Non-standalone (NS) 5G technology, which has been the bulk of the 5G networks deployed worldwide, uses 4G infrastructure already in place and piggybacks on the 5G signal through this equipment. Because 4G infrastructure has been deployed globally, the non-standalone equipment is more plentiful than standalone 5G equipment currently installed worldwide. However, standalone infrastructure is growing in deployment.
While COVID-19 temporarily slowed 5G deployments, at the end of the first quarter of 2020, there were more than 63.6 million 5G connections globally, a 308.66% growth over the fourth quarter of last year, according to market research firm Omdia. As such, 5G smartphone shipments are forecasted to reach more than 200 million units this year, up from just 16 million units in 2019, Omdia said.
5G standalone will help enable new use cases such as connected self-driving vehicles, supercharged internet of things (IoT), real-time translation and more applications that have yet to be discovered, T-Mobile said.
While testing, the company saw a 40% improvement in latency and in the near future standalone will allow T-Mobile to use its entire 600 MHz footprint for 5G. With NS 5G, 600 MHz 5G is combined with mid-band 4G LTE to access the core network, but the 5G signal only goes as far as mid-band LTE.
However, 5G SA can go beyond the mid-band signal of 600 MHz, allowing for more coverage from a single tower and going deeper into buildings than before. The switch to 5G SA allowed T-Mobile to increase its footprint by 30%, covering 1.3 million square miles in more than 7,500 cities in the U.S.
T-Mobile partnered with Cisco and Nokia to build the 5G core and with Ericsson and Nokia for the 5G radio infrastructure. Meanwhile, OnePlus, Qualcomm and Samsung work with T-Mobile to make sure its existing devices can access SA 5G with a software update, based on compatibility.
