UScellular has initiated a trial of its Standalone (SA) 5G core, with CTO Mike Irizarry telling Mobile World Live that the cellco seeks to use the upgraded infrastructure to offer network slicing to users of its fixed wireless access (FWA) service in the first instance. Irizarry told the publication: ‘I can create those distinct slices, or logical networks, on top of my physical network and tune the experience to give the best experience to each of those customers and optimise the delivery, which will improve my cost to deliver those services to those unique customers.’ If successful, SA 5G availability is expected to be extended to the operator’s mobile network.

The confirmation of UScellular’s network status comes a matter of weeks after it was revealed that the SA 5G core deployed by Verizon Wireless is not yet carrying commercial traffic. When quizzed as part of a Recon Analytics podcast late last month, Joe Russo, EVP and President of Global Networks & Technology at Verizon, told the hosts: ‘We have it in trials only at this point. We don’t have it commercially available for our customers.’

As a result, T-Mobile US is the only US mobile operator with a live SA 5G network. In April this year AT&T stated: ‘We have said that we plan to deploy SA 5G when the ecosystem is ready, and AT&T is charging forward to advance SA ecosystem readiness.’ That remark was made by Jason Sikes, assistant VP of Device Architecture, when discussing AT&T’s successful ‘5G SA carrier aggregation (CA) uplink data call’.