Mobile and fixed broadband operator Yettel Hungary announced on Monday (20 November 2023) that it has switched on a 5G Standalone (5G SA) network, claiming a national first. Yettel’s press release says that following a pilot with researchers and engineers at the University of Obuda, home and office 5G fixed wireless customers will soon gain access to 5G SA-based services.

Yettel notes that its 5G network – up until now operating solely in Non Standalone (NSA) mode integrated with 4G systems – currently spans 700 base stations across the country, with around 10% of the operator’s mobile internet traffic already carried via 5G technology, which also supports its residential and B2B fixed wireless broadband services. 5G SA has now been activated across the 700 base station footprint but is initially available to selected customers only, with Yettel stating that home and office 5G internet users will be offered 5G SA in a phased launch scheduled to run until the end of Q1 2024, during which period the company will be optimising the network to ensure suitable quality of customer experience. Later in 2024 smartphone users will be given mobile 5G SA access, although Yettel has not yet set an exact date for this move.

Yettel notes that 5G SA data traffic between user devices and its network is transmitted exclusively on the frequency band designated for 5G and on the core network optimised for it, thus making it possible to fully exploit the 5G standard’s potential in terms of customer experience, significantly lower network latency (response time), increased download and upload speeds, and new digital services for consumer and B2B segments such as 5G-based voice calls and network slicing for advanced industrial/IoT use cases.