These irritants may soon be a thing of the past.
T-Mobile of the US and Reliance Jio are teaming up to launch the world’s first global roaming system using the latest and fastest 5G technology, called 5G Standalone (SA).
Right now, if you travel between the US and India, your smartphone might lose some of the features or high speeds that come with your plan at home. It’s like your premium plan doesn’t fully work abroad. But with this new 5G SA roaming, you will be able to keep those benefits and enjoy top-speed service.
“We will be announcing the first global standalone (SA) roaming right on the 5G with Jio in a few weeks, and that’s really kind of where the customers benefit a lot,” Ankur Kapoor, chief network officer at T-Mobile told Mint.
“We are pretty confident that before the end of this year, we will actually make this available to all the customers. We still are kind of in the testing phase,” Kapoor said.
This means that if a user has a special 5G plan with Jio in India or T-Mobile in the US—one that includes perks like faster data and better service—those benefits usually don’t carry over when they travel. For example, the specialised plans could include a dedicated gaming 5G plan. In the absence of this proposed 5G roaming arrangement, users are treated like a regular customer when they go abroad, even if they’ve paid for premium features. With the new system in place, those perks can now work across both countries, so users keep getting the same experience, whether they’re in the US or India, explained Kapoor.
India’s 5G landscape
In India, Jio is on 5G Standalone (SA) network, which runs entirely on 5G technology, making it faster, more reliable, and better for advanced features. In comparison, Bharti Airtel is on 5G Non-Standalone (NSA), which is built on top of existing 4G infrastructure and depends on 4G networks for some functions. A standalone international roaming kind of a service, therefore, cannot be supported on Airtel’s network at the moment, industry experts said.
Queries sent to Jio did not elicit any response till press time.
On possible revenue streams for both Jio and T-Mobile with this upcoming 5G arrangement, Kapoor said, “the benefit is for the customers. When they are coming in, they are getting these advanced technologies and all the new innovations…You will see some of the new functionalities coming in into both sides.”
Jio is the only operator in India that has 5G Standalone, while T-Mobile in the US has had the architecture for over two years. Kapoor said other US operators – AT&T and Verizon – are in the process of rolling out 5G SA network. In India, Airtel too is working on to upgrade network architecture to Standalone.
As of June-end, Jio had 498.1 million users, making it the largest telecom operator by market share in the country. Of the same, Jio had 213 million 5G subscribers in the June quarter, up from 191 million in the preceding January-March quarter.
T-Mobile, which is a leading telecom operator in the US, serves over 132.8 million users.
“The promise of 5G was kind of massive connectivity and not having any strings attached to older technologies. All the new innovation that’s coming out is all being done on 5G standalone and if you don’t have that, you cannot enjoy those benefits. An example of that would be network slicing,” Kapoor said.
5G network slicing means creating multiple virtual networks on top of a single physical 5G network—like slicing a pizza into different pieces, where each slice is customized for a different need. Each slice can be tailored to support different services with their own performance levels — such as speed, latency, security, and reliability.
“Network slicing is no longer just a concept – it’s live, nationwide, and powering real-world applications. With Jio Platforms’ robust 5G SA core and network slicing platform (NSP), 10 active network slices are now in production, optimised for scale, performance and reliability,” Aayush Bhatnagar, chief technology development officer at Jio Platforms said in a LinkedIn post in July.
According to Bhatnagar, the company has built 5G network slices for gaming, internet of things (IoT), enterprise, gaming, and mission critical services.
Similarly, T-Mobile last year launched T-Priority, the first network slice in the US designed to support public safety and critical infrastructure agencies.
“Yes, a 5G Standalone roaming pact can improve user experience — mainly by ensuring seamless HD (high-definition) voice and stable 5G data instead of falling back to 4G,” said Parag Kar, an independent telecom analyst.
“However, the benefits of 5G slicing will remain limited for now, since most advanced applications might be hosted in their respective home countries,” Kar added.
When asked about 5G monetisation, Kapoor said, “I think of T-Mobile and think of United States, we are monetizing 5G, like there is no tomorrow. We built a complete FWA, the fixed wireless access, which is built on 5G. We have over 7 million consumers using FWA and over 80% of users using 5G today.”
He added that 95% of T-Mobile traffic is on 5G.
Indian telecom operators are also banking on monetising 5G using FWA. As of June-end, Jio had 7.4 million subscribers using FWA.
FWA is a way to deliver high-speed internet to homes or businesses using wireless signals instead of cables like fiber.
“Jio AirFiber is now the largest FWA (fixed wireless access) service provider in the world, with a base of 7.4 million subscribers,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, in the April-June quarter earnings release of the company.
Among other things, T-Mobile has also begun discussions with Indian operators on how a collaboration can be explored on 6G, especially since the new standards will have to be set.
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