The shift to 5G standalone mode (SA) is gaining pace. With the government making 5G SA mandatory, attention is on whether it will lead to a network overhaul to prepare for the AI era.

The Ministry of Science and ICT recently announced detailed policies for spectrum reallocation and made the transition to 5G SA mandatory. The aim is to reorganise networks into a more efficient structure to prepare for the AI and 6G era.

South Korea's 5G services have mainly used non-standalone (NSA) mode, which uses LTE and 5G together. 5G NSA uses 5G base stations, but control signals and some data pass through the LTE core network. So far, only KT has provided 5G SA service to some users among the three carriers. SK Telecom and LG Uplus have operated 5G services using the NSA method.

Unlike SA, which runs both the radio access network and the core network on 5G, NSA has performance limits in implementing ultra-low latency and ultra-connected environments and in network slicing. The industry expects that if all three carriers adopt 5G SA, network structures to prepare for the AI era will be built in earnest.

Network slicing in particular is cited as a key element for preparing for the AI era. Network slicing is a technology that divides a single physical communications network into multiple independent virtual networks. Using network slicing can guarantee quality tailored to service characteristics. For example, a network with ultra-low latency can be allocated to connected cars, while a network optimised for large-volume downloads can be assigned to streaming services.

Ericsson, a global telecom equipment company, said in a recent mobility report that 5G SA functions such as network slicing have moved beyond the experimental stage and entered a phase of full-scale spread as commercial services. It also said 5G SA networks designed to prepare for increasing uplink traffic are being launched.

The transition to 5G SA is also essential for responding to the AI era. To smoothly use AI solutions such as large language models, uplink performance for sending data is important as well as downlink for downloading data. 5G SA can respond more flexibly to uplink traffic that delivers data needed for AI processing to base stations.

The government is also speeding up efforts to encourage the 5G SA transition. By linking 5G SA transition performance to the calculation of spectrum reallocation fees, it will require the three carriers to connect 5G base stations to a standalone core network separated from the LTE core network. If they do not comply, the ministry plans to use corrective orders and other steps to encourage a rapid shift to 5G SA.

It also plans to include 5G SA assessment items in the annual telecom service quality evaluation. A ministry official said it could be reflected as early as this year's quality evaluation, depending on the transition trend. The ministry plans to establish evaluation indicators this year that match 5G SA characteristics such as ultra-low latency and ultra-connected features and network slicing.

Another ministry official said it judged that the transition to 5G SA was necessary from the perspective of the evolution of the national network. The official said it would continue to develop specific performance measurement methods that users can perceive.