Ericsson, Telia and Qualcomm teamed to test new standalone (SA) 5G capabilities on the operator’s network, designed to significantly reduce latency and battery consumption for smartphone and enterprise users.

The trio have joined forces to develop inactive state of Radio Resource Control (RRC Inactive), a feature they stated reduces the amount of signalling required during state transitions, which has the knock-on effect of lowering both latency and battery consumption.

These, they believe, are crucial requirements for many IoT and 5G use cases, including critical control of remote devices, enhanced mobile broadband and smart transport.

To implement RRC Inactive, Ericsson used its software and SA 5G nodes with a test device powered by the Snapdragon X60 Modem-RF system. The companies explained they were able to demonstrate successful transition between “a connected state and inactive state”, without the device falling back to idle.

Transitioning to a new inactive state reduces the amount of signalling required during state transition, which lowered latency for the end user by up to three-times. Putting this into real world use cases, the shortened lag will have “a big impact” in experience for applications including cloud and VR gaming.

The feature enabled battery savings of up to 30 per cent when activating RRC Inactive, with screen and associated electronics the biggest battery drainers in a mobile device.

Jenny Lindqvist, head of Ericsson northern and central Europe, said the milestone was “taking 5G technology to the next level, and RRC will continue to play a critical role for 5G networks for years to come”.