Decoding 5G Standards, Spectrum, And Carriers

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is tasked with setting the standards for wireless wide area networking and mobile communications. As its name might indicate, this started with 3G, the network standard supported on the first Apple AAPL +0% iPhone back in the early 2000s. Today, the 3GPP covers existing 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE infrastructure as well as future generation 5G network standards. The organization’s most current offering, Release 15, provides two paths for deploying 5G networking: standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA). I would like to define both, discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the new spectrum ranges that will be covered, and provide some insight into the carrier confusion that has resulted from the release.