Telstra has announced its 5G Standalone can finally be used by mobile devices, despite first deploying the technology in 2020.

5G mobile technology in Australia currently relies on 4G infrastructure in order to run. 5G Standalone uses purely 5G infrastructure, rather than running a 5G radio access network over a 4G core.

Telstra’s 5G Standalone technology means that 5G-standalone-capable devices can operate purely in 5G mode, without the support of underlying 4G technology.

It uses the 5G network for data transfer, as with the current non-standalone 5G, but also uses 5G for the signalling communication between the device and base station.

The problem is, until today, none of these standalone-capable devices were available in Australia.

The big benefit of 5G Standalone is ‘network slicing’ which allows varied experiences and speeds over the same network, depending on how much load a user needs.

“5G Standalone technology allows us to carve up our world-leading mobile network into separate, secure slices that can be finely tuned to suit the needs of many customers,” Nikos Katinakis, Group Executive, Networks & IT at Telstra, explains.

“These slices can be tailored to provide an assured network experience with minimum guaranteed up and down speeds, lower latency and faster responsiveness of applications, greater security and greater reliability.

“So while one person may want high speed and low latency, and another may require the opposite, we can tailor to suit their needs. This is different to today where everyone’s experience is the same.

“For you, that means gaming over 5G that feels more responsive and consistent. It means less waiting for pages to load and feeds to refresh, even in a crowded carriage of people doing the same thing.”

Telstra said that 5G Standalone is currently available with the Samsung Galaxy S22, S22+ or S22 Ultra with the Android 13 firmware update.

Telstra has not confirmed which other phones will be able to support 5G Standalone, or when this support will be available.