The 3GPP officially released their first Standalone standards for 5G New Radio.
“The freeze of Standalone 5G NR radio specifications represents a major milestone in the quest of the wireless industry towards realizing the holistic 5G vision.” Said Balázs Bertényi, Chairman of 3GPP TSG, in a statement. “RAN 5G NR Standalone systems not only dramatically increase the mobile broadband speeds and capacity, but also open the door for new industries beyond telecommunications that are looking to revolutionize their ecosystem through 5G.”
These new standards lay the groundwork for the independent deployment of 5G, while the Non-Standalone standards originally approved in December 2017 make use of legacy networks in rolling out 5G.
Several hundred delegates from all aspects of the wireless industry were in attendance at the meeting in La Jolla, Calif.
While these standards are no doubt a momentous occasion, work still remains. Industry consultants SGR noted that “some RAN working groups will spend much of the remaining year addressing known gaps in the specifications” and troubleshooting.
Here are some of the responses from the carriers:
AT&T: “Commercial 5G services are closer than ever with the completion of 3GPP Release 15,” said Hank Kafka, VP Access Architecture and Standards. “This milestone will allow for more advanced testing using standards-compliant equipment and paves the way for our commercial 5G launch in a dozen cities later this year.”
Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile: “We welcome the on-time completion of the Standalone Architecture with a cloud-friendly core network as part of the Rel-15 3GPP standard. This is another crucial milestone to realize a full end-to-end 5G system,” says Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP Research & Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom. “Deutsche Telekom recently implemented the world’s first non-standalone architecture trial in a commercial network in Germany. We now look forward to continuing our cross-industry collaboration to accelerate the 5G ecosystem development and explore the applications of reduced latency and network slicing, so that we can bring the full benefits of 5G to our customers.”
Softbank/Sprint: “SoftBank would like to express our gratitude to the leading companies for the timely completion of 5G standardization in 3GPP,” said Junichi Miyakawa, CTO of Softbank. “In 2020s, everything will be connected to the internet, guiding us to greater revolution than ever. SoftBank has a huge expectation toward the upcoming 5G era, and is willing to lead the whole industry to accelerate the commercialization of 5G.”
Verizon: “I applaud 3GPP’s completion of Release 15 including the Standalone NR System specifications,” said Ed Chan, senior vice president and chief technology architect. “This milestone mirrors our active contributions and collaboration in industry standards and our continued leadership in 5G with our vendor partners, like the creation of Verizon 5G Technical Forum with key industry players in 2015 to accelerate the pace of 5G innovation.”
