Phone cos prep upgrades to standalone 5G as rollout nears

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said last month that most telcos are deploying non-standalone 5G (NSA) in the rush to be the first to launch. Jio, on the other hand, will launch SA 5G.

In the NSA mode, only the RAN (radio access network) is upgraded to 5G, while the core network remains on existing 4G infrastructure. On the other hand, both RAN and core networks are upgraded to 5G for the SA mode. A 5G core includes virtualized, software-based network functions, which allows telcos to meet diverse network needs that aren’t possible in the NSA version of 5G. Jio is expected to start SA 5G services from Diwali, in late October, while Airtel plans to roll out its 5G services the same month on the NSA mode.

According to experts, most 5G phones in India support NSA 5G networks, but consumers will be able to connect to SA 5G once updates start rolling. The upgrades will be rolled out like any other over-the-air (OTA) update of core software on smartphones. Of the top five smartphone sellers, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme are among brands that are working on the SA 5G update. Samsung and Vivo declined to comment.

“All the 5G devices we have launched in the last one year support 2100MHz, 1800MHz, 900MHz, and 3300-3800 MHz bands on NSA mode. SA mode will require an over-the-air update, which we are working on and expect to roll out by the time networks start rolling out,” said Muralikrishnan B, president at Xiaomi India,.

Tasleem Arif, vice president and head of R&D at Oppo India, said the company is in the “process of upgrading” the current 5G devices to the SA network in collaboration with telcos. “We have worked with these players to build a comprehensive 5G experience for the users and become one of the leading players in DSS, VONR, SA network slicing, and other technologies,” he said. A spokesperson for Realme confirmed the company has been testing 5G devices with telcos and will issue updates gradually.

“SA networks help realize the true potential of 5G networks. With 5G core, SA networks allow low latency, high-speed communication,” said Sachin Kalantri, senior director of product marketing at chipmaker Qualcomm, which also supplies modems to smartphone makers. According to a February 2021 report by analytics firm OpenSignal, based on analysis of telco T-Mobile’s SA 5G rollout in the US, users’ time connected to 5G saw a sharp rise after the upgrade to the SA mode. It said that SA 5G networks showed 23.8% improvement in latency in urban areas as compared to NSA networks.

Latency is the time taken for data to travel from a source to the endpoint. It is what users actually perceive as “data speeds”on a wireless network, while bandwidth allows how much data can travel at a time.

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