More than 20% of the 535 operators known to be investing in 5G have made investments in public 5G standalone (SA) networks, according to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA).
The organization says that 115 operators in 52 countries and territories – 21.4% of the operators — have made 5G SA investments. Of these, 36 operators in 25 countries have launched or deployed public 5G SA networks. Two of these are soft launches.
GSA also says that the number of 5G SA devices rose from 686 at the end of 2021 to 1,750 last month. There are 86 announced modems and chipsets.
Private Networks
GSA also found that as of May, about 1,148 organizations were known be deploying or had been granted a license for LTE or 5G private networks. Of these, 505 are using 5G for private mobile networks, with 66 – about 13% — already working with 5G SA. The organizations already working with 5G SA are involved in manufacturing, academics, commercial research, construction, communications, IT services, rail and aviation.
“Operators are increasingly testing and deploying 5G standalone networks,” GSA President Joe Barrett said in a press release. “With a totally new, cloud-based, virtualized, microservices-based core infrastructure, 5G SA brings benefits, including lower latency, support for massive numbers of devices, and programmable systems, enabling faster and more-agile creation of services and network slices.
“As the momentum behind 5G SA networks and devices continues, we can expect to see more operators deploying the new services they enable such as voice over New Radio.”
In June 2022, GSA reported that almost 800 organizations were deploying LTE or 5G private mobile networks. More than 70 others were involved in the projects.
Almost a year to the day earlier, GSA reported that there were 822 announced 5G devices. Sixty-two percent of those were thought to be commercially available.
