3GPP Release 18 marks the start of 5G Advanced, which builds on the 5G baseline defined by 3GPP in previous Releases 15, 16, and 17. There is a wide consensus in the industry that 5G Advanced will bring new enhancements to current mobile network capabilities and use case-based support to help mobile operators with 5G commercialization, long-term development of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) and network energy savings for a fully automated network.

5G Advanced will also bring system-level enhancements to the 5G NR standard, while also optimizing capabilities for specific vertical industries and applications.

Some of these innovations include:

• AI-enabled end-to-end communications

• Support for new spectrum bands

• Wide-area IoT evolution

• Private networks and more
  

5G Advanced will also provide stepping stones in areas that will influence the future 6G systems, expected to be launched around 2030 and thus bridge 5G with 6G. 

In this report, we describe the progress in terms of standardization, as well as the new features and use cases to be enabled by 5G Advanced.