Telstra’s 5G Network To Stand On Its Own Feet

Telstra’s 5G Network To Stand On Its Own Feet

Telstra has announced that its 5G network is now ‘end-to-end enabled’ enabled, meaning that in the future it won’t kick users back down to 4G – which cam be the case at the moment.

Big T is calling this 5G Standalone and it basically means that it won’t rely on 4G technology to function. Instead, its radio network will connect to a cloud native 5G core network

“Getting the Telstra mobile network to be 5G Standalone-ready is an important step towards unleashing greater capabilities for enterprises and consumers alike,” said Nikos Katinakis, Telstra’s Group Executive Networks & IT, in a statement.

“Working together with our technology partner Ericsson, our new 5G service-based architecture will allow us to create innovative new services and solutions and deliver these much quicker than in the past.”

It’s worth noting that 5G Standalone will only be available to capable devices. “Testing of early pre-commercial 5G Standalone-capable devices is also underway, with commercial devices expected to become available from late 2020.”

At the present time there because there are already devices in market that appear to be compatible devices, but according to Telstra they will not currently work with 5G Standalone.

“[A] 5G SA network compatible device like the Huawei P40 Pro and Samsung S20 variants that are 5G SA + NSA would not work immediately due to not being compatible to our network settings. We are currently only testing early pre-commercial 5G Standalone-capable devices. So late 2020 is the target,” said a Telstra spokesperson in an email to Gizmodo Australia.

Telstra is also currently working with 5G partners such as Ericsson as well as device manufacturers to explore how 5G Standalone will work in the near future.

“Working together with our technology partner Ericsson, our new 5G service-based architecture will allow us to create innovative new services and solutions and deliver these much quicker than in the past,” said Katinakis.

This article has been updated with a quote from Telstra regarding compatible devices.

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