Rolling on with rolling out 5G standalone

• More than 70 mobile operators have launched 5G standalone networks
• More are to come, driving growth in the 5G mobile core network market
• Europe still lags behind markets such as China, India and the US

Slowly but surely, the 5G standalone (5G SA) deployments that add additional service creation and delivery firepower to mobile operators are finally becoming a reality, with the UK an example of a market where the main players are forging ahead with their 5G SA rollouts. 

The promise that they would invest £11bn in building a 5G SA network to “every corner of the UK by 2034” certainly greatly aided Vodafone UK and Three in getting their merger project through the regulatory process and towards completion. The newly minted VodafoneThree is now planning to splash £1.3bn of capex funds in its first year of operation alone.

Elsewhere in the UK, BT-owned mobile operator EE, which began its 5G SA deployment in September 2024, announced recently that 5G SA-enabled services will be available to more than 34 million people (more than half of the population) by the end of August 2025, and its ambition is to extend this to more than 41 million people by spring 2026. 

The UK’s other main telco, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), first launched 5G SA services for its consumer customers, in 14 cities to start, in February 2024 and extended them to its enterprise customers in February 2025.  

All this activity bodes well for the UK’s future 5G SA coverage, although it’s fair to say that it’s not before time that the standalone variant of 5G is being deployed on a wider scale. Indeed, the pace of 5G SA rollouts globally has remained behind expectations, with most operators sticking with the 4G core-reliant, non-standalone (NSA) variant of 5G for longer than initially anticipated. The good news is that it is starting to look like the pace of 5G SA launches is picking up.

5G SA in numbers

Research firm Dell’Oro Group and industry body the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) estimate that more than 70 mobile network operators (MNOs) have so far deployed or launched 5G SA in around 39 countries or territories. 

In a recent report, Dell’Oro said five new 5G SA networks have been launched in 2025 alone, including Orange in France, Romania, and Slovakia; Vodafone in Spain; and O2 in the Czech Republic. “Regionally, we count five networks in North America, 26 in Europe, seven in the Middle East and Africa, 13 in Northeast Asia, 13 in Southeast Asia, and six in Latin America,” the research firm noted. 

It further observed that many MNOs offer 5G SA for enterprises and fixed wireless access (FWA) but have not yet opened the network to consumers. However, MNOs such as AT&T, Bharti Airtel (India), Bouygues Telecom (France), O2 Telefónica (Germany), SFR (France), Sunrise (Switzerland), Three Ireland, and Verizon are expected to do so soon.

Notably, Dell’Oro is forecasting an acceleration in the global 5G mobile core network market because of the increasing adoption of the full 5G SA architecture. The firm is projecting a 6% compound annual growth rate in the 2024 to 2029 period.

And according to a GSA report from April this year, more than 160 mobile operators are now investing in public 5G SA networks, of which 73 have launched or ‘soft launched’ services.  

Meanwhile, the Ericsson Mobility Report for June 2025 also predicts a healthy increase in 5G SA subscriptions during the next five years. While the number of subscriptions stood at 920 million in 2023, this number is expected to rise to 1.27 billion in 2024 and 3.66 billion in 2030, representing a CAGR of 19%. The total number of 5G subscriptions is expected to increase by 18% over the period, reaching 6.29 billion by 2030. 

Europe still trailing behind

Amid all this progress, a July report from Ookla provides more sober reading when it comes to 5G SA network rollouts in Europe. The company, which measures mobile network performance, says the deployment and adoption of 5G SA in Europe remains sluggish, “increasing slowly from a very low base and further widening the region’s gap with North America and Asia”. 

Ookla blames “persistent disparities in 5G coverage and long delays in harmonising spectrum availability” for this situation. It does single out Spain for its high score in the Ookla Speedtest chart, noting that Spanish operators have benefited from Spain’s subsidy-heavy policy framework, “which has allocated hundreds of millions of euros from EU recovery funds (NextGenerationEU) through UNICO-5G grants to finance more than 7,000 new sites in villages and along 30,000 km of roads”.

The European Commission itself recognises that the bloc still has work to do to achieve its digital targets. In its State of the Digital Decade 2025 report in June, it observed that the rollout of connectivity infrastructure, such as fibre and 5G SA networks, is still lagging.

In an earlier report in March, Ookla’s analysis found that China, India, and the US “have established clear leadership in 5G SA deployment”, with China leading the way. However, it did observe that despite a slow start, the EMEA region has accelerated its deployment pace, accounting for 70%-75% of commercial SA launches in the past two years, with Spain and Austria emerging as regional leaders.

- Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV