Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network Market 2025 – 2034

Reports Description

As per the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network Market analysis conducted by the CMI Team, the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market is expected to record a CAGR of 55.12% from 2025 to 2034. In 2025, the market size is projected to reach a valuation of USD 1.23 Billion. The valuation is anticipated to reach USD 83.08 Billion by 2034.

Overview

The Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network Market is evolving into the next-generation digital infrastructure, offering ultra-low latency, high-reliability connectivity, and advanced enterprise use cases beyond traditional telecom services. In contrast with NSA, which relies on legacy 4G LTE infrastructure, the Standalone 5G architecture is independent and therefore optimized for use cases that demand end-to-end network slicing, real-time data exchange, and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). This attains great relevance in smart manufacturing, autonomous mobility, healthcare automation, cloud robotics, and immersive XR experiences in the fast-paced digitizing economies of Asia-Pacific.

The impetus behind this regional shift toward standalone 5G is the creation of highly secure, low-latency networks usable in mission-critical functions such as telemedicine, industrial IoT, and automated logistics. Would-be competitors bleed the iPad 43,568-Congo with data-heavy applications spilling into multiple cloud ecosystems and pushing edge-computing demands, thereby fomenting investments into 5G core networks. Furthermore, companies from verticals such as automotive, energy, and advanced manufacturing are working alongside telcos and hyperscalers to produce dedicated 5G slices that provide an elevated QoS and greater operational autonomy.

Another main driver is the convergence of 5G with AI, IoT, and blockchain, as smart infrastructure becomes relevant in real-time analytics for ports, factories, and public transit systems. The region lives through a rise in partnerships involving telcos, system integrators, and equipment vendors to provide turnkey standalone 5G solutions tailored for enterprises.

With the market maturing, players are more deeply focused on overcoming obstacles such as a huge CAPEX requirement, spectrum fragmentation, and cybersecurity threats. Governments take proactive steps by way of subsidy support for infrastructure, facilitating license issuance, and creating sandbox environments for vertical-specific 5G innovations.

Key Trends & Drivers

The Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market trends have tremendous growth opportunities due to several reasons:

• Rapid Industrial Digitization and Smart Manufacturing Push: Asia-Pacific is home to some of the world’s massive manufacturing powerhouses and includes China, Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan, all of which are embracing Industry 4.0 concepts to ramp up productivity, automation, and operational efficiency. Standalone 5G, with its extremely low latency, reliability, and high device density, can support other applications considered to be critical, such as remote control of machinery, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), industrial IoT (IIoT), and predictive maintenance. Smart factories and logistics hubs in South Korea and Singapore are already on private 5G networks, preparing the way for big deployments.

• Government-Led Infrastructure and Spectrum Initiatives: With an aggressive 5G road map, China already counts over 3 million base stations, most of them being stand-alone. The 5G road map of India speaks of a dedicated spectrum for enterprises; meanwhile, Japan and Australia are fronting Sandbox programs to foster innovation in 5G-enabled healthcare, agriculture, and Public Safety. These big-bang programs are further bolstered by tax incentives, research grants, and pilot deployments to build an attractive investment landscape and hasten the commercialization timelines.

• Explosion in Data Consumption and Device Connectivity: With a rapidly growing digital population, Asia-Pacific sees exponential data demand, driven by video streaming, cloud gaming, IoT proliferation, and immersive experiences, viz., AR/VR. Standalone 5G networks with dedicated slicing promise superior bandwidth and near-zero latency to provide uninterrupted high-throughput performance for millions of concurrent users and devices. With smart cities and connected consumer ecosystem attempts, the landscape of smart homes to connected vehicles is growing, and the demand keeps scaling for a self-propelled 5G architecture capable of real-time data exchanges.

• Edge Computing and Cloud-Native 5G Core Advances: The very conjunction of the Standalone 5G with edge computing opens a whole new world of latency-critical applications stretching from ambulance applications through retail ambiance and remote surgery. In this decentralized network infrastructure, operators have an edge at product differentiation and at presenting better QoS (Quality of Service) for time-sensitive applications in highly dense urban setups such as Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai.

• Growing Ecosystem of Device and Equipment Manufacturers: Asia-Pacific enjoys an operational ecosystem of 5G equipment vendors (Huawei, Samsung, ZTE, NEC), chipset providers (MediaTek, Qualcomm), and device OEMs that entail the continuous supply and deployment of Standalone-ready network infrastructure and devices. The regional advantage in manufacturing, which stands for lower deployment costs, faster innovation, and greater supportive adoption from both consumers and enterprises regarding 5G Standalone capabilities, is some icing on the cake. The presence of 5G-compatible industrial sensors, routers, and gateways further combines with this to provide end-to-end digital integration for industries.

Key Threats

The Asia-Pacific Private 5G Network market has a number of primary threats that will influence its profitability and future development. Some of the threats are:

• High Infrastructure and Deployment Costs: Unlike NSA, which uses existing 4G infrastructure, standalone 5G networks require complete upgrades to core and radio networks, including upgrades to base stations, edge data centres, and a whole new core architecture. The entire capital outlay is too much for the telecom operators, especially in developing countries where ARPU remains low. Small telecoms and new entrants may find securing long-term ROI difficult, which in turn postpones these rollouts in rural or less developed areas.

• Spectrum Licensing and Regulatory Complexities: Standalone 5G demands clean, wide blocks of spectrum spread over low-, mid, and high-band frequencies. However, in the Asia-Pacific region, fragmented spectrum allocation schemes impede a uniform rollout. India and Indonesia, for example, suffer spectrum auction delays or face exorbitant spectrum fees caused by incumbents holding the spectrum. Regulatory inconsistencies arising between nations on issues such as net neutrality, data sovereignty, or even the legitimacy of certain cross-border cloud uses further make it difficult for multinationals to forge truly uniform service offerings across the region.

• Cybersecurity and Network Resilience Issues: Standalone 5G brings ultra-reliable and low-latency applications, such as autonomous systems, remote surgeries, and industrial automation, and security is paramount. Its virtualised and cloud-native architecture exposes Standalone 5G to cyber-attacks, such as DDoS attacks, network slicing violations, and intrusions into virtualised core functions. Governments harbour distrust of foreign suppliers for national security and sometimes stall these partnerships. Addressing these risks, while requiring advanced threat detection, regulatory oversight, and resilient network design, makes rollout difficult and costly.

Opportunities

• Industrial Digitization and Smart City Initiatives: Industry 4.0 and smart urban development are the fastest-growing applications in the Asia-Pacific region, thus creating a substantial demand for dedicated, low-latency, and high-capacity connectivity that standalone 5G networks offer. Governments of South Korea, China, Japan, and Singapore, in that order, are investing heavily in the development of smart factory models, intelligent transportation systems, and AI-driven public infrastructure. In the very top tier of use cases that telcos, system integrators, and equipment manufacturers will develop are projects requiring ultra-reliable standalone 5G networks.

• Private 5G Networks for Manufacturing and Logistics: Enterprises in Asia-Pacific are beginning to adopt private, standalone 5G networks for performing mission-critical operations in the automotive, mining, shipping, and electronics industries. China and South Korea are some of the countries that have rolled out enterprise-level 5G licensing programs, thus enabling manufacturers and ports to deploy their own private 5G infrastructure. These networks enable real-time monitoring, remote machine control, and predictive maintenance-high-margin opportunities for solution providers and for operators offering a range of managed services.

• Growth of 5G-Powered Use Cases: XR, IoT, and Edge Computing: Such Standalone 5G supports emerging technologies with Extended Reality (XR), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), and edge-enabled AI applications. In the Asia-Pacific region, where the digital consumer is basically mobile-first, we are beginning to see the use of 5G for immersive gaming, virtual retail, and real-time translation services. Telecom operators providing XR services bundled with Standalone 5G subscriptions or being able to offer low-latency edge applications for SMEs will be able to secure new revenue streams and differentiate themselves in an already saturated market.

Category Wise Insights

By Component

• Solution: With the investments of governments and enterprises in digital infrastructure, independent 5G solutions are therefore increasing across the Asia-Pacific for high-performance, low-latency networks. Next-generation RAN infrastructure is part of the initiatives along with core network upgrades and AI-based orchestration systems. Hence, countries like South Korea, Japan, and China are carrying out deployments of fully virtualized and containerized network components, creating demand for end-to-end 5G Standalone solutions by telecom operators and private networks.

• Services: It is during deployment that complexity is set up over the myriad terrains and complex regulatory regimes across the Asia-Pacific, thus gaining traction for consulting, integration, and managed operation services. As enterprises drift to private 5G networks, whether through it or not, customized 5G network planning, deployment, and optimization services are offered by services. States like India, Vietnam, and Indonesia, where they lack the technological ability to build 5G networks within their borders, are increasingly service-oriented, and thus they are leaning toward outsourcing in this respect.

By Spectrum Type

• Sub-6 GHz: In Asia-Pacific, sub-6 GHz spectrum remains the dominant deployment option due to its vast geographic coverage, ability to penetrate buildings, and economic factors, functioning adequately for urban and semi-urban rollouts. Countries, including India and Southeast Asia, mostly consider this type of spectrum to gain connectivity coverage across the lands for the early-stage deployment of public 5G networks and smart infrastructures promoted by the government.

• mmWave: Although this is still an emerging adoption wave, mmWave spectrum is entering technologically advanced markets like Japan, South Korea, and parts of China for applications demanding ultra-high speed and extremely low latency. In dense urban environments, stadiums, industrial automation areas, and edge data centers, mmWave is considered paramount. With the growth in private 5G networks and use cases demanding gigabit-level throughput-to-the-scale, mmWave will flourish in remote surgery, AR/VR applications, and advanced robotics.

By Network Type

• Public: While the closed-loop public Standalone 5G networks have truly been greenfieldized in the United States of America, South Korea, and China under very strong government mandates, as well as through competition amongst the mobile operators, and since consumer data demands have skyrocketed in these parts of the world. Like broadband consumer services, public networks are also remunerated for nationwide smart initiatives that include transportation grids and infrastructure for national digital services.

• Private: Private 5G networks have been quickly gaining ground ever since industrial clusters, ports, and manufacturing zones either needed or sought such private networks. Enterprises from the sectors of automotive, energy, and logistics are very earnestly working toward the implementation of private 5G Standalone with the objectives of having network slicing under their control, securing their networks, and achieving very low latency. Countries like India, Australia, and Singapore are fast-tracking the implementation of private 5G through regulatory Sandboxes and through the allocation of spectrum to enterprises.

By Industry Vertical

• Manufacturing: Manufacturing remains the major 5G Standalone adopter in the Asia-Pacific region. Smart factories, IIoT, and automated quality inspection have shown a huge appetite for 5G Standalone, given its ultra-low latency, high device density, and deterministic communication. China’s industrial parks and Japan’s automotive clusters present classic cases of strong early adoption.

• Corporate Enterprises: Standalone 5G is the latest communication, cloud connectivity, and remote operations tool that can be used. With hybrid working arrangements having become so cool, Standalone 5G is used to conduct encrypted video calls, configure secure VPNs, and perform heavy data processing in Singapore, India, and Australia.

• Automotive and Transport: 5G Standalone is used in Asia-Pacific to activate V2X, autonomous vehicle road testing, and smart logistics. The Korean and Chinese markets, on the other hand, develop ecosystems for connected cars supported by Standalone 5G, while Malaysian and Japanese ports build automated freight logistics supported by real-time data connectivity.

• Energy and Utilities: 5G Standalone is a small grid automation enabler and supports activities such as predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring in the energy sector. Stakeholders aim to coalesce operational efficiency and safety through 5G Standalone for Indian power grids, oilfields in Australia, and renewables in Vietnam. 5G-based drone and sensor inspections are now at the investigation stage in the sector.

• Healthcare/Hospitals: Standalone 5G telemedicine, connected diagnostics, and real-time patient monitoring enhance healthcare systems in the APAC. Private 5G in urban hospitals of Japan, South Korea, and Singapore is being used to support surgery, AR-assisted diagnostics, and AI-based patient tracking. Mobile clinics are also assisted by 5G Standalone for rural outreach.

• Smart Cities: The governments of China, India, and Thailand are planning the integration of Standalone 5G with smart city programs to cater to traffic system management, surveillance, and urban services. These programs will provide intelligent street lighting, real-time public safety, and automated waste management through 5G-connected IoT.

• Others: There is agriculture for precision farming, education for immersive learning, and retail for in-store AR ambience. These verticals actively seek to use Standalone 5G to morph their operations, mainly where digitization has started coming into the picture, that is, since the pandemic.

Impact of Latest Tariff Policies

As growing geopolitical tensions emerge, allied countries shift trade partnerships in support of these, and policies on digital sovereignty undergo alterations accordingly, the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G-network market undergoes structural realignments far beyond mere technological changes. Governments across the region—from India and Australia to South Korea and Vietnam—have reassessed the execution of their 5G deployment strategies in view of global trade restrictions, most especially those levied on Chinese telecom giants. Vendor diversification, local innovation, and strategic resilience are configured with the continued imposition, and even possible expansion, of bans and restrictions by the United States and several members of the allied forces against Huawei and ZTE, the regional 5G ecosystem.

In 2025, the phased exclusion of Chinese vendors from public infrastructure projects by India, subsequent to their 2020 border conflict, has merely served to accelerate indigenous 5G efforts. Indian telecom majors like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel now purportedly prefer to ally with European vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia while investing in domestically developed open RAN (O-RAN) systems to reduce dependencies on foreign intellectual property. Similarly, they pursue the goal of being credible, trusted alternatives in the Standalone 5 G value chain by harnessing their semiconductor prowess and network software capabilities in Japan and South Korea.

ASEAN countries, on the other hand, are treading on a tightrope, as countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines have seen redirected supply chain investment flowing into their territories away from China, and yet they simultaneously continue to balance the cheap access to Chinese infrastructure with increasing diplomatic alignment with the U.S. and Quad partners. This tension also influences their national spectrum allocations, supplier approvals, and 5G rollout priorities. The ensuing battlefield concerning data localization and cybersecurity frameworks, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, likewise influences Standalone 5G infrastructure choices by requiring operators to provide for an edge computing capacity and an in-country data center, even if it means a steeper CAPEX initially.

Report Scope

Regional Perspective

The Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market is divided across different countries, such as China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Rest of Asia-Pacific. This is a cursory overview of the overall region:

One of the fastest-growing and dynamic regions on the globe for the market of Standalone 5G networks is the Asia-Pacific, driven by its aggressive push for digitalization, applications for industries, and the supportive measures of various governments. This region with more than 45% of global deployments of Standalone 5G would fund the likes of China, Japan, South Korea, and India, who are forefront runners for adaptation, with their promising prospects, such that Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, and others in the economy of Southeast Asia are increasingly entering commercial deployment of their Standalone 5G networks.

China alone claims a share of more than 30% of the Standalone 5G market in the region, given its mammoth industrial 5G use cases in ports, energy, and smart manufacturing. China, with leading mandates from the government and with the homogeneous presence of domestic equipment vendors in the network infrastructure projects, sees widespread Standalone 5G coverage in urban and industrial clusters. South Korea and Japan together make up for nearly 20–25% of the market. Having begun their commercial deployment early on, their focus has been on private 5G for industrial automation, connected vehicles, and robotics. It is also where open RAN and virtualized 5G core technologies have found substantial adoption, enabling the quick scale-up of private Standalone 5G networks ahead of most of their global counterparts.

India, entering late among them all, is showing decent growth momentum with operators opting for the deployment of Standalone 5G networks at a great speed. The country is expected to command above 10–12% of the regional market by 2030, riding the waves of smart city initiatives, agriculture connectivity, and government assistance in making locally manufactured infrastructure components for 5G. Australia is holding onto this platform along with Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia, with a combined market share of around 10–15% but progressing slowly. The logistics, mining, and public infrastructure sector’s enterprise digitalization will provide some further boost to their growth, but network density and cost serve as the foremost inhibitors.

Therefore, the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G market is highly enterprise-driven, particularly in the manufacturing, energy, logistics, and healthcare sectors. As vertical customers are increasingly promoted through use cases, operators have started adopting cloud-native cores, edge computing integration, and network slicing capabilities. The region’s early commitment to private 5G licenses, notably in Japan and South Korea, along with government-led policy interventions in India and Southeast Asia, will drive the market’s robust growth potential by 2034.

Key Developments

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market has experienced several crucial changes as the players in the market strive to grow their geographical footprint and improve their product line and profits by using synergies.

• April 2025 will see an elevation of the ongoing partnership between Nokia and Bharti Airtel to enhance the 4G/5G network experience in India. Nokia is poised to deploy its Packet Core and Fixed Wireless Access solutions in seamless integration of 5G and 4G technologies, and additionally provide home broadband capacity and enterprise services. The collaboration stands to enhance network quality and cut down operational costs through automated processes and Genial while supporting Airtel on the road to deploying its 5G Standalone architecture.

• In April 2025, Airspan Networks Holdings LLC acquired Corning Incorporated’s wireless assets, including the DAS (6000 & 6200 series) and SpiderCloud 4G/5G small cell RAN portfolios. This acquisition is set to complement and strengthen Airspan’s global indoor connectivity portfolio and consequently enable the company to assist Asia-Pacific CSPs and neutral hosts in extending Standalone 5G coverage in high-density indoor environments such as airports, hospitals, and smart factories.

• In February 2025, the Eurasian duo announced Asia-Pacific’s first programmable 5G Standalone network with 5G Advanced capabilities. A four-year collaboration will see Telstra building its RAN using Open RAN-ready hardware and embedded AI-driven automation for self-healing and self-optimizing capabilities. With this development, Telstra cements its network innovation leadership in offering customized connectivity and API to external technology developers major milestone for the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G ecosystem.

• In August 2024, Viettel conducted the first Standalone 5G tests in Vietnam, barely three months after spectrum licenses were granted by the Ministry of Information and Communications. This marks a major step in the country’s 5G commercialization efforts, placing Vietnam among the 58 nations that had tested Standalone 5G by Q1, 2024, indicating strong regional momentum in the Standalone 5G market within Asia-Pacific.

• In March 2024, a three-year agreement was signed by Ericsson with Advanced Communications and Electronics Systems (ACES) for the deployment of advanced indoor 5G solutions throughout Saudi Arabia. Given Ericsson’s cutting-edge penetration in the Asia-Pacific region, it is expected that this partnership will act as a technological and commercial template for CSPs across nations like India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where strong indoor 5G networks will be at the very heart of enterprise-grade Standalone 5G deployments.

These important changes facilitated the companies widening their portfolios, bolstering their competitiveness, and exploiting the possibilities for growth available in the Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market. This phenomenon is likely to persist since most companies are struggling to outperform their rivals in the market.

Leading Players

The Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network market is competitive, with a large number of product providers. Some of the key players in the market include:

• Ericsson
• Nokia Corporation
• Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
• Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• ZTE Corporation
• Cisco Systems Inc.
• NEC Corporation
• Fujitsu Limited
• China Mobile Limited
• NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)
• Bharti Airtel Limited
• Reliance Industries Limited
• China Telecom Corporation Limited
• SK Telecom Co. Ltd.
• Singtel (Singapore Telecommunications Limited)
• Telstra Corporation Limited
• Others

The Asia-Pacific autonomous 5G network market is characterized by high competitiveness, being aggressively contested by regional telecom giants, infrastructure vendors, and emerging technology providers for supremacy in the rapidly evolving arena. Countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and India have taken the lead, with 5G rollouts that are state-sponsored, heavily capitalized, and mated with strategic partnerships with equipment manufacturers like Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung.

These players are stricken with an urgency to carve out early leadership positions in 5G infrastructure, edge computing, and private network solutions targeting the manufacturing sector, smart cities, and healthcare. Although China currently stands at number one in the region by way of the highest number of 5G base stations and subscribers (more than 50% of the regional market share), South Korea and Japan are pushing the technological envelope with novel deployments and integration of AI and IoT in their Standalone 5G networks.

Meanwhile, India, Australia, and Southeast Asian countries are quickly advancing in competitive spectrum auctions, forming vendor partnerships, and leveraging governmental incentives. The fast-moving dynamic environment filtered into the market, which has gotten fiercely competitive, where innovation, speed to market, and network customization become the key differentiators, and where the harsh reality is that no player or consortium could be caught in a state of complacency in this explosive digital transformation of the region.

The Asia-Pacific Standalone 5G Network Market is segmented as follows:

By Component

• Solution
  • 5G Radio Access Network
  • 5G Core Network
  • Other Solutions Type
• Services

By Spectrum Type

• Sub-6HZ
• mmWave

By Network Type

• Public
• Private

By Industry Vertical

• Manufacturing
• Enterprise/Corporate
• Automotive & Transportation
• Energy & Utilities
• Healthcare/Hospitals
• Smart Cities
• Others

Regional Coverage:

Asia Pacific

• China
• Japan
• India
• New Zealand
• Australia
• South Korea
• Taiwan
• Rest of Asia Pacific