AT&T Debuts Nationwide Standalone 5G With Slicing

AT&T deploys historic nationwide standalone 5G core. News of the deployment came in a statement published this morning coinciding with remarks by Chris Penrose, senior VP of advanced mobility and enterprise solutions at AT&T, who made an appearance during TPG’s Product Roadmap event. You likely won’t notice a new icon on your phone, but this is the architectural change carriers must make to be able to offer more predictable performance, lower latency and service tiers that reflect how people and businesses actually use wireless networks.

How Standalone 5G Changes Network Performance and Apps

Most US 5G has operated in non‑standalone mode, which latches 5G radios to a 4G control plane. This transition is called standalone (SA) 5G, which replaces that LTE anchor with a cloud‑native 5G core, enabling devices to register and stay on 5G end-to-end. In practical terms, that shift aids in lower control-plane overhead, uplink reliability and establishes more consistent latency for such features as precision location, industrial controls and real-time video.

Millions of AT&T customers are already attaching to the SA core as device support and provisioning grows, according to AT&T. The company is lighting up SA across low-band for coverage and its faster mid-band C-band and millimeter-wave footprint, branded as 5G+. That mix matters: low-band gain tends to turn into wider 5G coverage, while SA on mid- and high bands can provide a throughput and jitter safety net for the most demanding apps.

Network Slicing Moves From Promise to Products and SLAs

Network slicing allows carriers to divide a single physical network into several kinds of virtualized slices, each with different performance goals. Think about a slice with guaranteed uplink for live broadcast, or a low-latency slice for AR navigation, or an ultra-reliable slice for public safety. SA is the technical innovation that allows such service-level agreements to be enforced, and to change over time.

Some rivals have already tested the water. The other networks are doing it too. T-Mobile switched on SA early and has already commercialized slices for priority services and business tiers. Verizon has announced slice-based features including advanced video calling and a national first-responder service. Now, with SA live coast to coast, AT&T can transition slicing from trials to commercial offerings and support industry efforts including GSMA Open Gateway and CAMARA APIs that permit developers to request network capabilities on demand.

RedCap Points to Wearables and IoT With Efficiency Gains

The AT&T SA core also supports Reduced Capability (RedCap), a 3GPP standard for a reduced feature set to facilitate lighter, cheaper and more power-efficient 5G devices. RedCap aims at devices that do not require multi‑gigabit throughput—think wearables, sensors, and cameras—resulting in improved battery life and lower module costs without reverting to LTE.

The carrier is already using RedCap for the most recent wave of Apple Watches, which includes Apple Watch Series 11, SE 3, and Ultra 3. That’s an early proof point for how SA and RedCap can bring 5G to more than just high-end smartphones but also mass‑market connected devices, from consumer wearables to enterprise asset trackers.

Spectrum Strategy and Device Readiness Across Bands and Gear

Given the SA core spans AT&T’s spectrum layers—low-band for coverage, C-band for capacity, and mmWave for dense hot spots—the uplift customers experience will differ by location and device. Some of those devices will simply switch to SA on their own as carriers flip the provisioning switch; others may require firmware updates to enable capabilities like Voice over NR (5G-native voice) and slice-aware connectivity.

Studies from outside testing firms like Ookla and RootMetrics have shown that SA can improve uplink performance and reduce latency in areas where it’s been deployed, results that should become more apparent as device ecosystems catch up.

The big caveat: SA benefits vary with how much a carrier can keep a session on the 5G core and with how much mid-band spectrum is available in a market.

Rivals and the Race to Differentiate With SA and Slicing

T-Mobile has been running SA since last year and using it to blast out coverage at 600MHz, turning on higher bands for speed. Verizon maintains that it has very broadly deployed its SA network and introduced slice-driven service already to market. AT&T’s move covers the architecture gap, and establishes a far more interesting set of races: not whose “5G” it can have, but who can take that 5G and bundle it up into distinct, reliable experiences for particular jobs to be done.

Worldwide, GSMA Intelligence is monitoring around 40 live SA networks, while work on time‑sensitive networking enhancements and enhanced positioning from 3GPP progresses. As features come together, watch for carriers to woo enterprises with SLAs, and per‑application prioritizations and API hooks that give developers working in the wild world of lab rigs access to network functions.

What to Watch Next as AT&T Scales SA, Slices, and RedCap

On the immediate horizon, expect AT&T to evolve VoNR up its scale chain, expand RedCap into industrial gear and test commercial slices in market trials tied to public safety and business-critical scenarios that might dovetail with its FirstNet assets. Pricing and transparency will count: Enterprise slices demand clear guarantees, while consumers are going to need straightforward tiers that correspond to real benefits, such as a smoother cloud gaming experience or more reliable live sharing.

Standalone 5G is the starting point, not the endgame. With the heart of its 5G network now live across the country, AT&T has a foundation to make 5G more than just a generic speed boost — it can become a series of reliable, programmable services. This next stage of winners will be the carriers that convert that engineering work into everyday reliability customers can see — and developers can build on.