3GPP to speed up 5G standardisation, NSA ready by March 2018

(Telecompaper) The 3GPP has agreed to develop an intermediate standard for 5G, to be ready by March 2018. The news follows a call from a number of leading operators and equipment vendors at Mobile World Congress to accelerate the standardisation of the next generation of mobile network technology. Under the intermediate New Radio standards, control signalling would still be sent over the LTE networks, known as Non-Standalone (NSA) operation. Standards for Standalone (SA) operation, where all con