5G NSA to allow Airtel to use 4G technology at no extra cost: Gopal Vittal, CEO

NEW DELHI: Airtel chief executive officer Gopal Vittal said that non-standalone mode or NSA of 5G has more advantages over the SA and standalone mode and the telco has “solid” mid-band spectrum to offer better 5G experience to its customers.

In the NSA mode, Vittal said that the great advantage is that the 3.5 GHz layer actually travels much further because it performs the downlink – it does not need to do the uplink – because that is done by the 4G layer – this is invariably the 1800/2100 band, also called mid-band.