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.
Direxion signage at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. The holiday-shortened week started with gains in stocks amid a broad advance that saw a continuation of the bullish momentum on Wall Street.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Motive, a company with software for managing corporate trucks and drivers, on Tuesday filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MTVE.”
The paperwork puts Motive among a fast-growing group of tech companies looking to go public in 2026. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX have all reportedly considered making their shares widely available for trading next year.
Motive is smaller, reporting a $62.7 million net loss on $115.8 million in revenue in the third quarter. The loss widened from $41.3 million in the same quarter of 2024, while revenue grew about 23% year over year. The company had almost 100,000 clients at the end of September.
Ryan Johns, Obaid Khan and Shoaib Makani started Motive in 2013, originally under the name Keep Truckin. Makani, the CEO, is Khan’s brother-in-law.
Investors include Alphabet’s GV, Base10 Partners, Greenoaks, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Scale Venture Partners.
Motive’s AI Dashcam device for detecting unsafe driving “has prevented 170,000 collisions and saved 1,500 lives on our roads,” Makani wrote in a letter to investors. Most revenue comes from subscriptions, although Motive does sell replacement hardware and professional services.
The San Francisco company changed its name to Motive in 2022, and as of Sept. 30, it employed 4,508 people. Motive employs 400 full-time data annotators who apply labels that are meant to enhance artificial intelligence models.
Motive has ongoing patent-infringement litigation with competitor Samsara, which went public in 2021 and today has a $22 billion market capitalization.
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A silicon wafer with chips etched into is seen as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris tours a site where Applied Materials plans to build a research facility, in Sunnyvale, California, U.S., May 22, 2023.
Pool | Reuters
The U.S. will increase tariffs on Chinese semiconductor imports in June 2027, at a rate to be determined at least a month in advance, the Trump administration said in a Federal Register filing on Tuesday.
But in the meantime, the initial tariff rate on semiconductor imports from China will be zero for 18 months, according to the filing from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
As part of an investigation that kicked off a year ago, the agency found that China is engaging in unfair trade practices in the industry.
“For decades, China has targeted the semiconductor industry for dominance and has employed increasingly aggressive and sweeping non-market policies and practices in pursuing dominance of the sector,” the office said in the filing.
The decision to delay new tariffs for at least 18 months signals that the Trump administration is seeking to cool any trade hostilities between the U.S. and China.
Additional tariffs could also become a bargaining chip if future talks break down.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a truce in the so-called trade war in October, as part of a deal that included the U.S. slashing some tariffs and China allowing exports of rare earth metals.
The USTR’s Tuesday filing states that tariffs will increase on June 23, 2027.
The notice is the next step in a process focusing on older chips that started during the Biden administration under Section 301 of the Trade Act.
The new 2027 date gives clarity to American firms that have said they are closely watching how U.S. tariffs could affect their businesses or supply chains.
The tariffs are separate from other duties threatened by the Trump administration on Chinese chip imports under Section 232 of the law.
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