As requested by a group comprising the major mobile operators and suppliers at MWC in Barcelona the 3GPP has agreed to bring forward the standardisation of the Non-standalone (NSA) 5G NR mode for the enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB) use-case.
3GPP RAN Chairman said “In Non-standalone mode the connection is anchored in LTE while 5G NR carriers are used to boost data-rates and reduce latency. With the updated workplan, NSA will be finalized by March 2018. At the same time, the group re-instated its commitment to complete the Standalone (SA) 5G NR mode by September 2018 and put in place a plan to achieve that.”
The advantage of the change is possible earlier adoption of 5G New Radio NR carriers with their superior speed, latency and capacity. The risk is that the overall 5G standardisation and hence implementation is delayed.
