Global 5G standalone dynamic shifts from coverage to capability | Computer Weekly

5G standalone (SA) networks have now moved beyond launch announcements and entered into an execution-driven phase, with significant movement in leading territories and core key features, according to research from Ookla and Omdia.

The second edition of the flagship report on the global state of the 5G standalone industry found that by the close of 2025, the “coverage gap” between major economic blocs had narrowed, but a more consequential “capability gap” has emerged, reflecting divergent spectrum strategies, investment depth and the extent to which operators have moved beyond baseline SA deployment towards end-to-end network optimisation.

Globally, 5G SA availability – measured on Ookla Speedtest data – reached 17.6% in Q4 2025, inching up from 16.2% a year earlier, indicating that roughly one in six 5G speed tests worldwide now occur on a standalone network. The headline global median SA download speed of 269.51Mbps now represents a 52% premium over non-standalone networks. However, Ookla cautioned that this figure masks significant regional variation driven by spectrum allocation depth, carrier aggregation maturity and user-plane engineering.

The analysts point out that technologically, the deployment of four-carrier aggregation and enhanced multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technology, coupled with the strategic allocation of premium mid-band spectrum to the SA network, demonstrates the performance ceiling that a fully realised 5G SA architecture can achieve.

On a regional basis, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have established themselves as the global 5G SA performance leader, with the UAE setting the speed benchmark. In general, the GCC countries now deliver median download speeds five times those in Europe, while the US has completed its Tier-1 SA launches. Europe is accelerating, but from a low base, and the research warns that the gap compared with global leaders risks widening as 5G Advanced networks scale elsewhere.

In detail, the report noted that, led by what it called the “aggressive” 5G Advanced deployments of operators E& and Du, the GCC delivered the world’s fastest 5G SA median download speeds in Q4 2025 at 1.13Gbps, nearly five times that of Europe. The UAE alone reached a median of 1.24Gbps on SA networks, a speed that the analysts say would be considered “exceptional” even for full-fibre broadband in developed markets.

The next-best market was South Korea, which offered median download speeds of 767Mbps, driven by wide 3.5GHz channel bandwidth, with the US racking up 404Mbps following the completion of nationwide SA deployments by all three Tier-1 operators.

By stark contrast, Europe, at 205Mbps, trails all developed regions, though the region’s SA networks still deliver a 45% download speed premium over non-standalone 5G (NSA), confirming, said the analysts, the performance value of the SA transition where material spectrum depth is allocated. Europe’s 5G SA sample share more than doubled from 1.1% to 2.8% between Q4 2024 and Q4 2025.

Four markets account for the vast majority of European SA connections – Austria (8.7% of all 5G), Spain (8.3%), the UK (7.0%) and France (5.9%). The latter two countries registered the strongest year-on-year acceleration in Europe, each gaining 5.3 percentage points. This is said to reflect the impact of investment-linked merger conditions and competition in the UK, as well as targeted R&D policy support in France.

Globally, SA connections delivered a 52% download speed premium, attributed mainly to an artefact of rich spectrum allocation and lower network load, as well as improved median multi-server latency by over 6% compared with NSA. However, the research firms stressed that a standalone core migration alone does not guarantee a better user experience.

Quality of experience analysis revealed that SA improves video and cloud infrastructure latency in Europe versus NSA, but underperforms NSA for gaming latency in the same region. For example, North America recorded the lowest absolute SA cloud and gaming latency scores, something the study said was consistent with dense hyperscaler adjacency and mature interconnect ecosystems.

Among European markets, France (41ms to cloud endpoints), Austria (48ms), and Finland (50ms) were cited as demonstrating what is achievable where backbone quality, peering density and routing discipline are strong. These outcomes reflect an underappreciated end-to-end network stack optimisation dividend, encompassing datacentre proximity, fibre backhaul depth and user-plane topology, rather than a pure “SA dividend” alone.

On monetisation of 5G SA, the study stated that enterprise slicing presents the much larger long-term revenue opportunity, with T-Mobile’s SuperMobile representing the first nationwide commercial B2B slicing service in the US.

It added that countries with coordinated regulatory frameworks, implementing clear coverage obligations, investment incentives or infrastructure consolidation policies with deployment remedies, consistently outperform those with fragmented or reactive approaches, reinforcing the view that policy has emerged as a primary competitive differentiator in 5G SA outcomes globally.