South Korea's SK Telecom is claiming another first in its home market where many technological firsts occur. The operator says it successfully tested and used a 5G standalone (SA) terminal, base station, and network core earlier this summer.

The successful data transmission on a pure 5G network was initiated with base stations and core equipment from Ericsson and terminals from Qualcomm, according to SK Telecom . The operator is no stranger to early adoption — it previously laid claim to the world’s first commercially available standards-based mobile 5G network in December 2018.

Like all currently available mobile 5G networks, SK Telecom’s operates on the non-standalone (NSA) core, which means the operator relies on a 4G LTE network core to support both generations of cellular technology. The operator says it plans to commercialize its 5G SA infrastructure in the first half of 2020, along with other new capabilities such as network slicing and mobile edge computing (MEC).

SK Telecom isn’t the only operator advancing to a 5G SA core, but it is among the earliest and most advanced to date. During the last few months, T-Mobile US completed a 5G SA data session using equipment from multiple vendors; Ericsson readied 5G New Radio (NR) software that operators will need to deploy a pure 5G network; and Qualcomm and Ericsson initiated a 5G SA data connection test. Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, and other vendors and operators are also completing trials and moving toward 5G SA deployments.

“Generally in Asia there is much more interest and commitment to move to SA and I think this is motivated by the more aggressive push for 5G, especially in South Korea and China,” said Monica Paolini, founder and president of Senza Fili. Operators that are only using 5G in millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum, which is largely the case in the United States thus far, have little incentive to rush to a 5G SA core, she added.

“5G is good for marketing, SA is not, so why hurry?” Paolini said. “For all the benefits of SA it will require substantial work and a new approach to legacy networks.” Some of 5G’s most touted benefits such as network slicing require SA but it only makes sense in the near term for operators that are ready to implement network slicing, she added.

Operators in the “[United States] and Europe will lag behind — I would guess by a year or maybe even more. And it may depend on how smooth and beneficial the move to SA is,” Paolini explained.

“It's hard to say who is ahead because some operators may be building their first 5G networks to be SA while others are deploying NSA infrastructure to lay the groundwork,” said Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “I don't think we will have a good idea of what the landscape looks like fully until the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021, especially with Apple expected to launch the iPhone 5G in the latter half of 2020.”

This transitionary period also provides operators that didn’t push for early 5G networks the opportunity to go straight to 5G SA networks and “make the clear differences between a 4G and 5G network more marketable than the current NSA networks,” Sag said.

In addition to the 5G SA architecture, including a 5G core, operators are also waiting for devices that will support it, says Dave Bolan, senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group. Early 5G SA capable devices may arrive around mid-2020, he added. In the meantime operators can advance to 5G SA to boost network coverage particularly as 5G NSA has thus far failed to match the coverage of 4G LTE networks, especially indoors, Bolan explained.

Nonetheless, SK Telecom’s 5G SA test and plans to commercialize within the next nine months is a “significant development” because SK Telecom is actively developing 5G SA rather than just talking about it, according to Sag. SK Telecom is also an outlier for boasting a doubling of speeds over NSA and a three-fold improvement in data processing efficiency, he explained.

The rise of 5G SA networks also prompted Dell’Oro Group to adjust its 5G infrastructure revenue projections upward, according to Stefan Pongratz, VP at the market research firm. “In addition to the improved momentum with 5G NR, service providers are reassessing their 5G core roadmaps reflecting a more upbeat view about the incremental revenue opportunity drivers stimulating a greater ratio of core investments,” he said.