Dutch telco KPN has announced it has successfully completed a 5G Standalone (SA) test.

In a statement, the company outlined the potential for 5G SA to deliver increased speeds, improved latency, and networking slicing opportunities.

Standalone 5G is different from Non Standalone 5G as it isn't deployed on top of an existing 4G LTE network, and is therefore not reliant on older mobile generations and solely uses a 5G core network.

Using a localized test license in the 3.5GHz band to demonstrate a cloud gaming application in Breda with its technology partner Ericsson, KPN revealed that during these tests it was able to achieve download speeds of almost 1Gbps and a latency of 14ms.

“With the introduction of 5G standalone (SA), 5G will become an independent technology for both radio and core, said Erik Brands, director of mobile networks at KPN.

"This means smartphones will only use 5G frequency bands and the core network is fully dedicated to this new 5G standard. This is important because many future functionalities of 5G will be driven from the heart of the network. The arrival of 5G standalone will bring the next evolution of 5G with higher speeds and improved latency. In addition, it enables network slicing with which part of the network (a 'slice') can be optimized for a particular use case.”

Multiple antenna sites in the area were used for the test, which saw all data exchanged in real time between the player and the gaming platform that runs in a data center.

The 3.5 GHz frequency is scheduled to become available in the Netherlands at the end of this year, said KPN, adding that it will gradually introduce 5G SA from next year.