5G NSA v SA

    With the advent of 5G globally, let us try understand how 5G works in terms of technology. Ok, let us start with 5G situation in India at the time of writing this article. 5G specifically needs electromagnetic spectrum to operate, basically to transmit and receive signals. The Govt of India holds the authority over all the radio frequencies available for use. Despite companies like Airtel and Jio working on the technology front from quite a while back, the deployment was initiated after the 5G spectrum auction from the telecom ministry, Govt of India. The auction had seen huge bids from operators like Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and also from the Adani group. The auction event was so huge that the amount of money that government made from it was nothing less than 1.5 trillian rupees!!! with Jio emerging as the top buyer. Post the auction, companies like Jio and Airtel have built the infrastructure necessary for the 5G signals so fast and mostly covered most of the cities in India within few months. The 5G is still being provided free for all the users in India over their existing 4G recharge plans and the speeds are appreciable too. The smartphones with 5G support are available already from 10k rupees making 5G accessible to almost everyone. I will talk about pros and cons of 5G in a different article. But for now, let us try to understand the technology part of different ways of deploying 5G.

    There are 2 types of 5G network infrastructure - NSA (Non Stand Alone) and SA (Stand Alone).

NSA - Non Stand Alone

5G Non Stand Alone network is not the "True 5G" network. It works on 4G network core but still is a 5G network. Confusing right ? I will try to explain it better. Every generation of technology from 1G to 5G have to obey certain standards for them to recognised as 1G/2G to 5G. These standards are set by a body called 3GPP. They lay out certain specifications that needs to be met to be called as a particular generation network. In this case too, 5G service provider has to meet certain standards in terms of data speed (Uploads and downloads), latency all that. For example , for 5G the speeds must be beyond 1Gbps ideally. If the service provider can provide such speeds, they can claim that their network is 5G (It is not this simple though). Back into the topic, we have had 4G from a decade now. 4G is termed as LTE (Long Term Evolution) and had a new core design which treats data and voice together. This core was termed as EPC (Enhanced Packet core) and by which we were able to get high speeds of data and features like VoLTE (more details in a different article probably). 5G NSA uses the same core but has a new node from 5G NR (New Radio) to access the network. Hence, the name Non Stand Alone. 

As depicted in the diagram, 5G New Radio will handle all the access parts (transmission and reception) whereas the the core is still 4G which helps in connection establishment and data processing. Thus, the core handles dual connectivity that is both 4G and 5G. Since it uses 5G node, it can still provide higher speeds by dual connectivity.

Advantages of 5G NSA

1. Less initial cost for deploying 5G because there is no complete overhaul of network architecture as it uses a 4G core

2. Faster deployment of 5G since 4G network infrastructure is already well established in most parts of India as well as world.

3.Easier deployment as engineers are already aware of the network configuration of 4G due to its long existence.

Disadvantages of 5G NSA

1. Limitations in terms of possible applications of 5G

2. Data speeds are slower than SA

3. Mostly used currently in most parts of the world

5G SA

Unlike 5G NSA, 5G SA is the True 5G since it obeys 5G specs end to end. It doesn't use a 4G network core at all. It works on the 5G core designed as per the 3GPP specs. Because of the design of SA, it has clear advantages over NSA in terms of 5G quality. Due to its design, it can also serve different use cases of 5G like low latency, Network slicing, million devices connectivity and many more. (Use cases may be covered in different articles)

Advantages of 5G SA

1. True 5G, therefore can provide all 5G functionalities.

2. Low latency

3. Faster network than NSA.

Disadvantages of 5G SA

1. High equipment costs

2. Harder and time consuming to deploy due to lack of familiarization.

3. Not compatible with all the devices

Conclusion

5G , the 5th generation is not merely about higher data transfer speed but also has features like low latency (less than 1 ms), network slicing (different data speeds for different applications), multi device connectivity upto million devices (scalability), power saving, better voice quality through VoNR and many other features, All these features would by default not be available through NSA since it uses a 4G core. Speaking of which, lack of these features is a major disadvantage for the 5G NSA users. However, it doesn't make NSA bad because all these applications are not useful for all the users. In fact, due to NSA the 5G availability for consumers will be faster and it is definitely better than 4G. NSA also saves the equipment costs for network providers. Since it can be deployed on existing 4G, it increases the reach of 5G to many regions. Infact, 5G NSA is present in all the countries with 5G. 5G SA is yet to step into Europe, USA etc.

    In India, Bharti Airtel adopted NSA as a primary strategy to deploy 5G faster whereas Jio banked on SA. However, both the network provides provide both 5G NSA and SA.

Hope you had a good read :)