The Global 5G SA Footprint in 2026 (Poster Download)

5G SA rollouts are accelerating globally, but device and tariff-side fragmentation continue to drag on real-world usage

Editor’s Note: The 5G SA map in this poster has been updated. The revised version uses Zoom Level 11 tile resolution, consistent with last year’s edition, to better capture full-year network patterns, particularly in highly urbanized markets like China.

The deployment of 5G Standalone networks is accelerating across a widening number of markets, driven by maturing device ecosystems, rising core network investment, and the growing commercial imperative to deliver the performance improvements that the SA architecture can enable. Despite this progress, the gap between operator-reported coverage of 5G SA networks and real-world usage of these networks continues to widen, held back by tariff inertia and device-side fragmentation in network access.

Regional disparities in commercialization progress persist, but the direction of travel is clear. Markets that were virtually absent from the 5G SA landscape a year ago are now registering meaningful deployment levels, and several advanced operators are pushing into the next evolutionary phase with early deployments of 5G Advanced capabilities built on the SA foundation, including new levels of spectrum depth through advanced carrier aggregation features.

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural edition, Ookla® has released an updated high-resolution downloadable poster based on Speedtest Intelligence® data, offering a unified view of the global reach of both 5G NSA and 5G SA networks through 2025. This visual accompanies a new flagship global study in collaboration with Omdia, comparing the competitiveness of leading regions and countries in 5G SA deployment, performance, and monetization.

Key Takeaways

Asia Pacific continues to lead in 5G SA reach, but new entrants are reshaping the global leaderboard

In 2025, six of the top ten countries by 5G SA reach were in Asia Pacific, with China (79.0% 5G SA sample share), India (49.2%), and Singapore (37.0%) maintaining dominant positions globally. China’s lead has been reinforced by multi-operator SA deployments across all major carriers, while India’s position reflects the deep nationwide low-band coverage strategy pushed by Reliance Jio on the 700 MHz band, supplemented by growing mid-band SA rollout. Singapore’s strong showing, meanwhile, reflects the favorable deployment conditions provided by a small landmass and very high urbanization.

The United States (27.6%) has continued its upward trajectory, propelled by T-Mobile’s maturing SA network and commercial launches by both AT&T and Verizon for the first time during the year, while Australia (15.4%) has similarly benefited from multi-operator SA deployments. Thailand (8.5%) and the Philippines (9.0%) round out the Asia Pacific contingent, reflecting growing SA ambitions in Southeast Asia. The UAE (8.0%) has entered the top ten for the first time, signaling a geographic diversification of SA adoption beyond advanced Asian markets. Austria (8.0%) and Spain (8.1%) remain the only European markets in the upper ranks, though the region’s broader trajectory has shifted meaningfully.

The U.S. sustains its 5G SA performance lead, while the UAE and South Korea demonstrate the ceiling for optimized networks

The United States now combines relatively high 5G SA reach with strong download speeds, a combination that is unusual globally. In Q4 2025, median download speeds on 5G SA in the U.S. reached 403.97 Mbps, building on the gains recorded in the prior year, and significantly ahead of large-scale Asian deployments such as China (212.40 Mbps) and India (222.11 Mbps).

T-Mobile’s “layer cake” spectrum strategy remains the foundation of U.S. 5G SA performance. By pairing broad 600 MHz coverage, initially launched as 5G NSA in 2019 before transitioning to SA in 2020, with dense mid-band deployment in the 2.5 GHz band, the operator has matured its SA network to the point where advanced features such as uplink carrier aggregation and Voice over NR (VoNR) are now widely deployed. Recent 5G SA launches by AT&T and Verizon have extended multi-operator coverage and added the U.S. to the small but burgeoning list of Western markets in which all operators now support nationwide 5G SA networks.

At the top of the global performance table, the UAE has emerged as the clear leader in absolute 5G SA download speeds, registering a median of 1.24 Gbps in Q4 2025. This result is driven by large, contiguous TDD mid-band deployments, intensive carrier aggregation, and site grid densification by Etisalat and du. South Korea sustains its position as a high-performance market at 766.92 Mbps, propelled by its exclusive use of the 3.5 GHz band for 5G, though it continues to trail regional peers in SA reach due to limited commercialization beyond KT. This marks a notable shift from the global leadership South Korea held at the start of the 5G cycle.

5G SA delivers performance uplift across key metrics, but real-world gains in QoE require more than just a core migration

Globally, 5G SA networks are delivering materially improved performance compared to the non-standalone architecture, and the performance gains have held even as SA deployments mature with higher traffic onboarding. In Q4 2025, median download speeds on 5G SA were more than 120% higher than on NSA networks in North America, 57% higher in advanced Asia and Oceania, and 45% higher in Europe. The regional variation reflects differences in spectrum depth, network maturity, and the degree to which operators have activated advanced SA features such as carrier aggregation, rather than any inherent advantage of SA in downlink performance.

Headline latency improvements, a touted beneficiary of the transition to the 5G core, continue to be significant. SA networks delivered median multi-server latency reductions of more than 27% in advanced Asia and Oceania, nearly 24% in North America, and 17% in Europe compared to NSA. However, it is important to note that a standalone core migration alone does not guarantee a better end-user experience in real-world applications. Our quality of experience (QoE) analysis reveals a nuanced picture. SA improves video and cloud infrastructure latency in Europe versus NSA, but underperforms NSA for gaming latency within the same region. North America records the lowest absolute SA cloud and gaming latency, consistent with dense hyperscaler adjacency and mature interconnect ecosystems.

Among European markets, France (41 ms to cloud endpoints), Austria (48 ms), and Finland (50 ms) demonstrate what is achievable where backbone quality, peering density, and routing discipline are strong. These outcomes reflect an underappreciated end-to-end network stack optimization dividend, encompassing data-center proximity, fiber backhaul depth, and user-plane topology, rather than a pure “SA dividend” alone.

The upload story has begun to diverge by region. North America’s SA networks deliver 54% higher upload speeds than NSA, reflecting the early implementation of advanced uplink capabilities. In Europe, however, the upload advantage is just 6%, highlighting the still nascent deployment of features such as higher-order MIMO and uplink carrier aggregation in the region beyond leading countries like the United Kingdom. Advanced Asia and Oceania sit in between at 21%, suggesting that the ecosystem for advanced SA uplink capabilities remains at an early stage in most global markets.

A detailed analysis of the state of 5G SA and 5G Advanced around the world is featured in Ookla’s flagship report, produced in collaboration with Omdia, on regional competitiveness in the technology.

Ookla will be at Mobile World Congress this year, located at Booth 2I28 in Hall 2. Please drop by to discuss the state of connectivity in your market, and how Ookla’s network insights can help deliver better connected experiences.