British telco giant BT expects to launch 5G standalone — or ‘true’ 5G — later this year
An EE mobile phone store, operated by BT Group, in Reading, U.K. in 2020.
Jason Alden | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BARCELONA — British telecommunications giant BT says it expects to launch its first so-called “standalone 5G” network in 2024.
Howard Watson, BT’s chief technology officer, told CNBC that the telco group plans to switch on its standalone 5G network, which is often referred to in the industry as “true” 5G, later this year.
“Others are talking about it. They’re talking about it. But we are working to get the right ecosystem in place, which means the right set of devices,” Watson said in an interview with CNBC at the Mobile World Congress tech trade show in Barcelona.
That comes after a trial the company conducted with Swedish telco infrastructure firm Ericsson and chipmaking giant Qualcomm demonstrating network “slicing.” Network slicing is a configuration that allows multiple networks to be created on the same common physical network infrastructure.
“We’ve already been ensuring that the SIM cards that our customers have in their current 5G devices can do 5G standalone,” Watson added. “And so once we think there’s enough critical mass to have a real proposition, with some slicing behind it as well, we will launch that, and that will be later this year.”
What ‘5G standalone’ means
5G standalone would give you a slice of the network, or a specific amount of bandwidth with certain latency commitment. Each network slice is effectively an isolated part of the network that’s designed to fulfil the requirements requested by a certain application.
So, for example, if you’re a gamer and you need super-low latency to play a game competitively online, you could use 5G standalone to get latency of nine to 10 milliseconds, close to what you get from an HTTP connection to your home.
Latency is important for gamers as it measures response delays. The higher the latency, the more lag you get when you’re playing a game. This means less smooth gameplay.
“You may not want that 24 hours, seven days a week,” Watson said. “So we might have a really flexible pricing mechanism that says you can have that from 6pm to 8pm.”
“So bringing it to life in propositions for customers is how we will market it rather than with, come and buy some ‘standalone.'”
Milind Kulkarni, vice president and head of InterDigital’s wireless labs, said that network slicing is one step in a number of technological upgrades that will lead to so-called “5G Advanced,” an evolution of the 5G network.
“5G offers a fantastic platform with a lot of capability to support many use cases, and we have to continue our focus in enabling more vertical markets and increasing its capabilities as we march through 5G Advanced,” Kulkarni told CNBC.
5G standalone is different from 5G Advanced, though. 5G standalone refers to the development of a 5G network that isn’t being built on top of 4G cores. Whereas 5G Advanced is a complete evolution of the network.
BT and other network operators are looking to 5G standalone as a way to make more money from the next-generation networks they first started deploying around five years ago.
Future of 5G
Naturally, 5G plans are more expensive than 4G.
But consumers have been struggling to understand the value of 5G — which is often only incrementally faster than 4G — when many regions of the U.K. and developed countries still lack 5G connectivity.
To get 5G standalone networks off the ground, network operators first need smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung to ensure their devices have standalone capabilities.
Apple hasn’t done that in Europe, Watson said, and he’s holding out to see what happens with the next iPhone to see if the tech giant will make its smartphones 5G standalone-ready.
BT’s consumer business had a major rebrand in 2023, which focused on the launch of a full suite of services, an area that telco companies have had less success scaling than digital giants such as Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon.
BT is the U.K.’s leading telecom company, operating fixed and wireless networks across the country. BT’s consumer division has roughly 30% market share in broadband and mobile services.
Its enterprise segment works with larger business customers.
It has been operating the EE mobile network since acquiring it for £12.5 billion in 2016.
The Hims app arranged on a smartphone in New York on Feb. 12, 2025.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hims & Hers Health shares closed up 5% on Tuesday after the company announced patients can access Eli Lilly‘s weight loss medication Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro, as well as the generic injection liraglutide, through its platform.
Zepbound, Mounjaro and liraglutide are part of the class of weight loss medications called GLP-1s, which have exploded in popularity in recent years. Hims & Hers launched a weight loss program in late 2023, but its GLP-1 offerings have evolved as the company has contended with a volatile supply and regulatory environment.
Lilly’s weekly injections Zepbound and Mounjaro will cost patients $1,899 a month, according to the Hims & Hers website. The generic liraglutide will cost $299 a month, but it requires a daily injection and can be less effective than other GLP-1 medications.
“As we look ahead, we plan to continue to expand our weight loss offering to deliver an even more holistic, personalized experience,” Dr. Craig Primack, senior vice president of weight loss at Hims & Hers, wrote in a blog post.
A Lilly spokesperson said in a statement that the company has “no affiliation” with Hims & Hers and noted that Zepbound is available at lower costs for people who are insured for the product or for those who buy directly from the company.
In May, Hims & Hers started prescribing compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s GLP-1 weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The offering was immensely popular and helped generate more than $225 million in revenue for the company in 2024.
But compounded drugs can traditionally only be mass produced when the branded medications treatments are in shortage. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that the shortage of semaglutide injections products had been resolved.
That meant Hims & Hers had to largely stop offering the compounded medications, though some consumers may still be able to access personalized doses if it’s clinically applicable.
During the company’s quarterly call with investors in February, Hims & Hers said its weight loss offerings will primarily consist of its oral medications and liraglutide. The company said it expects its weight loss offerings to generate at least $725 million in annual revenue, excluding contributions from compounded semaglutide.
But the company is still lobbying for compounded medications. A pop up on Hims & Hers’ website, which was viewed by CNBC, encourages users to “use your voice” and urge Congress and the FDA to preserve access to compounded treatments.
With Tuesday’s rally, Hims and Hers shares are up about 27% in 2025 after soaring 172% last year.
WATCH: Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta’s head of artificial intelligence research announced Tuesday that she will be leaving the company.
Joelle Pineau, the company’s vice president of AI research, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, saying her last day at the social media company will be May 30.
Her departure comes at a challenging time for Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, investing billions of dollars in an effort to become the market leader ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google.
Zuckerberg has said that it is his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.
“As the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau wrote. “I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.”
Vice President of AI Research and Head of FAIR at Meta Joelle Pineau attends a technology demonstration at the META research laboratory in Paris on February 7, 2025.
Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty Images
Pineau was one of Meta’s top AI researchers and led the company’s fundamental AI research unit, or FAIR, since 2023. There, she oversaw the company’s cutting-edge computer science-related studies, some of which are eventually incorporated into the company’s core apps.
She joined the company in 2017 to lead Meta’s Montreal AI research lab. Pineau is also a computer science professor at McGill University, where she is a co-director of its reasoning and learning lab.
Some of the projects Pineau helped oversee include Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies like the PyTorch software for AI developers.
Pineau’s departure announcement comes a few weeks ahead of Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference on April 29. There, the company is expected to detail its latest version of Llama. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, to whom Pineau reported to, said in March that Llama 4 will help power AI agents, the latest craze in generative AI. The company is also expected to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot, CNBC reported in February.
“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.”
Pineau did not reveal her next role but said she “will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”
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