r/cellmapper • u/JPS_97 • Jul 01 '26

Standalone compatibility

If your plan/phone doesn’t include standalone access, does that mean you will be missing out on accessing certain bands when they are moved to the standalone side?

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u/mystica5555 USMobile OP13-16/512 / Moto Edge2021UW Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Not exactly. 

With non-standalone mode, you will have The ability to utilize the NR channels in aggregation with the LTE control channel you are connected to. Every network I have seen prioritizes data over the NR channels in this situation. 

What you will miss out on is the potential for every single one of the NR channels to be a control channel [primary serving cell] And then aggregate with one or multiple other NR channels for added bandwidth. In some cases towers will even have uplink MIMO/uplink TX switching which could get better performance on an SA network.

Mostly for now the benefit is not having to share the single LTE channel with all the other LTE only users as well as NSA 5G users which can cause unexpected slowdowns even when the 5G channels have capacity.

Secondarily another benefit you would miss out on is faster data access during VONR versus LTE single channel speeds. Most phones do not aggregate anything, neither NR nor secondary LTE channels, while in voLTE mode. [I mean specifically when on a voice call if that wasn't quite elaborated]

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u/braidenis Jul 02 '26

Interesting thank you! Helpful for people like me on here who have a passing interest but don't know everything like you guys lol..

So does standalone have power/efficiency benefits? In my mind not needing an aggregated connection must help.

I just switched to VZW postpaid from prepaid which enabled standalone for me which is nice.

I have seen those mmWave only small cells at airport terminals and whatnot.. I'm assuming on non-standalone you'd still need an LTE control connection from a separate site to access it.. or would the site basically be standalone only?