July 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 | July 2023 | 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 investing in any 3GPP 5G network

5G non-SA network, as a greenfield 5G

deployment for a public network operator 5G 5G SA

without a separate LTE network, or as a

535
private network deployment for an enterprise, 515 524
481 491 496 505
utility, education, government or other 453 464
428
402 412
organisation requiring its own private campus 381 388
348
network. 328

GSA has identified 115 # operators in 52# 235

201
182
countries and territories worldwide that have 154
134
102 108 111112 115 115
been investing in public 5G SA networks in the
68 82 89 99
52 61
form of trials, planned or actual deployments
(see Figure 1). This equates to 21.4% of the
535 operators known to be investing in 5G
licences, trials or deployments of any type.

At least 36 operators in 25 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,
two of which have only soft-launched their 5G
SA networks (see Figure 2).

In addition to these, 19 operators have been

catalogued as deploying or piloting 5G SA
for public networks, and 29 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 May 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
network so far. Of those, 505 are known
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© Australian Bureau of Sta�s�cs, GeoNames, Microso�, Navinfo, OpenStreetMap, TomTom
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,
communications and IT services, rail and

#
Restatement of figures following removal or merger.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | July 2023 | 2
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 1,750 announced devices
2,000
with claimed support for 5G SA, up 155.1%
from 686 at the end of 2021. Of those, 1,487 1,500
devices are already commercially available,
up 184.8% from 522 at the end of 2021 (see 1,000

Figure 3).
500
The number of 5G SA devices as a
0
percentage of all 5G devices announced

Apr 23
Mar 19

Mar 20

Mar 21

Mar 23
Jun 19

Jun 20

Jun 21

Jun 23
Dec 19

Dec 20

Dec 21

Aug 22

Dec 22

Feb 23
Sep 19

Sep 20

Sep 21

May 22

Jan 23
Nov 22

May 23
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
81.8% in December 2022. As of June 2023, Battery-operated Other
hot spot 7%
they account for 85.8%.
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
59%
customer-premises equipment (CPE), routers
and gateways for enterprise or industrial
Fixed wireless access CPE
customers or their systems integrators; CPE 14%
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 (59.0%) of the Other
hot spot
announced 5G devices with stated 5G SA Industrial 7%
1%
CPE/router/gateway/
support (1,034 phones), followed by fixed
modem
wireless access CPE (246) and modules (220). 5%
Looking solely at devices that are now
Module
commercially available (see Figure 5), phones 11%
account for an even larger proportion, at
63% (938 phones), followed by fixed wireless
access equipment (188 devices) and modules
(160 devices). A total of 137 vendors have Fixed wireless access CPE
commercial 5G devices for SA networks and 13% Phone
63%
another 65 have announced devices.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 5G Standalone: Global Status Update | July 2023 | 3
Chipset and Device Figure 6. Sub-6 GHz support by band, announced 5G SA devices, most-supported bands
Vendors
n78 1,465
The device ecosystem is supported by 86 n41 1,444
announced modems or mobile processors/ n1 1,309
platform chipsets stated to support 5G n77 1,257
n28 1,183
SA, from six vendors. Of those, 83 are
n3 1,115
understood to be commercially available, n5 1,025
including 15 discrete modems, 68 mobile n8 979
processors and platforms and two Internet n7 846
n38 817
of things chipsets. (Note: GSA only counts
n79 743
chipsets available for purchase by third n40 741
parties and does not count in-house n20 739
developed chipsets not offered for external n2 519
n12 449
sale.)
n71 421
GSA has identified 42 chipsets announced n66 397
n25 393
as supporting 5G carrier aggregation of
n48 320
some sort and 58 chipsets announced
as supporting VoNR. These features will
be important in encouraging widespread
adoption of 5G SA services.

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. We can expect support for spectrum bands
above 6 GHz to increase in the future,
Support for millimetre wave is not yet
as these bands are being promoted as
common. Chipsets are being developed to
an option for deployment of private 5G
support this capability — GSA has currently
networks by regulators in various countries,
only catalogued eight chipsets specifically
as well as being promoted as capacity bands
supporting 5G SA in millimetre-wave
for high-traffic locations in public networks.
spectrum (eight mobile processors and
platforms).

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 | July 2023 | 4
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© Global mobile Suppliers Association. 2023