- I’ve heard of 5G SA and NSA. What is the difference?

NSA (Non-Standalone) and SA (Standalone) are two varieties of the 5G network implementation. Simplistically, there are two main components of any mobile network – the radio network and the core network. The NSA implantation makes use of the 4G core network for signalling, whilst the SA requires a new 5G core network to be implemented. The 5G radio network is common to both NSA and SA. In addition, the SA network supports network slicing (which allows bandwidth to be dedicated to specific entities eg the Police) and ultra-low latency. It should be noted that in Singapore, both 5G SA and NSA are available.