Phone makers prep upgrades to standalone 5G as rollouts near

Smartphone brands are prepping upgrades for existing 5G smartphones, in order to support standalone (SA) 5G networks, after Reliance Jio announced that it plans to rollout an SA network in India. At the company’s 45th annual general meeting (AGM) last month, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said that most operators 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 operators to meet diverse network requirements which are not possible in the NSA version of 5G. 

Jio is expected to roll out SA 5G services from Diwali, which is in late October, while Airtel is planning to roll out 5G services sometime in October on the NSA mode.

According to experts, most 5G phones in India currently support non-standalone (NSA) 5G networks, but consumers will be able to connect to SA 5G once updates roll out. The upgrades will be rolled out like any other over-the-air (OTA) update, which are used to update core software on smartphones right now. Of the top five smartphone sellers in India, companies like Xiaomi, OPPO, and Realme are some of the brands that are working on the SA 5G update. Samsung and Vivo did not comment on this story.

“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 5G services,” said Muralikrishnan B, president of Xiaomi India, in an interview with Mint.

Tasleem Arif, vice president and R&D Head of OPPO India, also said that his 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 from Realme also confirmed that the company has been testing 5G devices with telcos for a while and will release updates gradually.

“SA networks help realize the true potential of 5G networks. With 5G core, SA networks allow low latency, high-speed communication,” explained Sachin Kalantri, senior director of product marketing for chipmaker Qualcomm, which also supplies modems to smartphone companies.

According to a February 2021 report by global analytics company OpenSignal, based on analysis of telco T-Mobile’s SA 5G rollout in the US, users’ time connected to 5G saw a significant increase 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. Latency is what users actually perceive as ‘data speeds’ on a wireless network, while bandwidth allows how much data can travel at a time.

Kalantri also pointed out that most of the existing 5G devices which support only NSA as of now, have the hardware capabilities to support SA 5G and the OEMs should be able to upgrade those devices through software upgrades. According to a June 2022 report by market research firm Counterpoint Research, Qualcomm led the Indian market with 44% share in smartphones in the first quarter of the year, followed by Apple, which had 26% market share.

“Although the software for any device is provided by its OEM, the upgrade to SA 5G is going to be a collective effort between operators, technology providers, and OEMs. Technology providers and chip vendors will play a key role in making the software available, and network carriers will be the major force behind its deployment,” Kalantri noted.