The fourth release of 5G standards is starting on its journey through the 3GPP’s process, and will be the first to be named ‘5G-Advanced’. The scope of the key projects within Release 18 has been approved by the standards body, though work will only officially start in mid-2022, after Release 17 is completed. The first two sets of 5G RAN and core standards were Releases 15 and 16, both of which have been finalized. Release 15 was split into two, with the Non-Standalone (NSA) specs being fast-tracked to enable operators to deploy 5G RAN more quickly than expected, because they did not have to wait for the 5G core to be defined and commercialized, but instead used the existing 4G…