Kathmandu, Dec. 13 -- Nepal Telecom, the state-owned telecommunication provider, has decided to roll out an ultra-fast 5G network in standalone mode.

This means that if the plan materialises, the longstanding partnership with China's Huawei-which developed Nepal's 3G and 4G network infrastructure-will effectively end for 5G, though the company will continue supporting existing services.

There are two approaches to launching 5G: non-standalone and standalone. Non-standalone builds on existing 4G LTE infrastructure and relies on the 4G core for functions such as authentication, mobility management and session handling.

Standalone mode, by contrast, is a fully independent 5G deployment.

Nepal Telecom launched its 4G service using Huawei ...