5G Advanced – May 2025: Summary and Member/Associate Reports
Our May 2025 update on investment in 5G-Advanced networks and the emerging ecosystem of chipsets, modules and devices. Operators are beginning to explore and deploy the next iteration of the 5G era, 5G-Advanced. 5G-Advanced is part of 3GPP Release 18 standards and builds on 5G standalone.
5G-Advanced technology is emerging slowly and the ecosystem is still in its infancy. Throughout 2025, GSA expects the roll-out of devices compatible with 5G-Advanced and 3GPP Release 18 standards to increase. Operators are investing in the technology and some have already launched, and greater adoption across chipsets, modems and devices will encourage investment in 5G-Advanced and the prerequisite 5G standalone technology.
Highlights from the report:
Investment in 5G-Advanced is in the early stages: GSA has identified 26 operators in 15 countries investing in the technology.
Asia has seen the most activity for 5G-Advanced, with countries like India, Uzbekistan and Taiwan investing and China and Macao SAR launching the technology.
GSA tracks 101 private mobile network pilots or deployments using 5G standalone. With 5G-Advanced, this will allow a private mobile network to maintain timing even if a non-terrestrial network service is interrupted and use terrestrial atomic clocks and timing signals relayed by fibre links.
Only one chipset has been released that is fully compatible with 3GPP Release 18 standards from a hardware and software perspective. GSA tracks five modems with support with 5G-Advanced.
GSA has tracked 75 devices that are hardware-compatible with 3GPP Release 18 and use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform. We expect increased device launches to start in late 2025 with the adoption of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X85 5G Modem-RF system.
5G Advanced – May 2025
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© GSA 2025
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