The telecommunications company Orange will launch the first end-to-end virtualized 5G Stand Alone (SA) network in Europe. As explained by the company, the experimental network will be launched from Lannion ( France ) in July and will serve to create a more efficient, flexible and autonomous connection.
Orange considers that this step is key to working on ” the network of the future “. With their initiative, they aim to ” better understand the improvements in customer experience that a fully virtualized network can bring .” In addition, the company intends to assess the potential of artificial intelligence and data.
Michaël Trabbia, Director of Technology and Innovation at Orange, has indicated that this experimental network will be an ” important milestone ” for the company. With its proposal, Trabbia has mentioned that they will implement Open RAN and Artificial Intelligence technologies to offer ” connectivity services on demand and the capabilities of an operator without human intervention “.
However, it should be noted that there are two notable types of 5G : the 5G NSA network and the 5G SA . The one that Orange promises to offer is the SA, but what are the main differences between the two? Which is better? In this post, we will solve some doubts.
What is the 5G NSA?
Various experts refer to the 5G NSA network as the less realistic of the two types. This is because it does not reach the maximum speed that these network technologies can reach .
To function, the 5G NSA needs an infrastructure of existing 4G networks . With this, they achieve a faster and easier implementation , however, it is not a real 5G.
NSA is the acronym for ‘Non-Stand Alone’, which in English means ‘not being alone’, that is, it refers to the need to resort to 4G networks in order to operate. In this way, we can point out that the 5G NSA network is really a hybrid between 4G and 5G.
Despite this, experts claim that the 5G NSA is capable of offering great browsing speed and lower latency, just like the SA. In fact, it can achieve speeds of up to 2 Gbps and response times as low as 10 milliseconds.
What is 5G SA?
This network that Orange intends to implement in every point of Europe would be the ‘real’ 5G. Its acronym SA stands for ‘Stand Alone’ and refers to the fact that the network infrastructures of the countries that implement this technology must make structural changes to protocols and architectures .
The 5G SA technology supposes a greater monetary and work investment for its development and extension. However, this network offers more stable connections and makes the most of 5G networks, especially when it comes to transfer speeds or latency.
