--- title: 3GPP Version 19 | daily.dev description: 3GPP Release 19, the second 5G-Advanced release, has been completed with fully implementable specifications available as of December 2025. The release balances... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/3gpp-version-19-wsf5wefxg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: 3GPP Version 19 | daily.dev og:description: 3GPP Release 19, the second 5G-Advanced release, has been completed with fully implementable specifications available as of December 2025. The release balances... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/3gpp-version-19-wsf5wefxg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/WsF5WEFXg.png og:image:alt: 3GPP Version 19 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # 3GPP Version 19 **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary 3GPP Release 19, the second 5G-Advanced release, has been completed with fully implementable specifications available as of December 2025. The release balances continuity with innovation, consolidating prior work while preparing for future developments. Release 20 will continue 5G-Advanced work in 2026 addressing commercial needs of deployed networks, while also initiating the first 6G studies covering requirements, system architecture, security, and radio evolution. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 18 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-24). **TL;DR:** The Hacker News thread is mostly a mix of technical curiosity and mild skepticism, with commenters diving into NTN/satellite connectivity details and poking fun at the portal's retro feel and file format quirks, while some express cynicism about 3GPP's track record on ambitious proposals like Ambient IoT and OpenRAN. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 50% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - Improvements to satellite (NTN) connectivity bring LEO broadband closer to commodity status, with existing standards already enabling unmodified phones to connect to space-based cell towers. - Release 19 is seen as a meaningful step toward programmable, energy-budgeted network platforms. **The pushback** - NTN satellite systems are economically questionable without government/defense subsidies, as coverage is most needed in regions least able to afford it. - Commenters are skeptical that Ambient IoT and similar 3GPP proposals will attract real investment, citing a pattern of ambitious specs with little follow-through. - OpenRAN and cloudified network functions are characterized as years of 'wheel-spinning' cargo-cult innovation with little practical result. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters engage substantively with NTN/satellite technical details and express cautious optimism, but temper it with cynicism about 3GPP's history of unimplemented proposals and OpenRAN failures. **Hottest debate:** Whether NTN satellite connectivity can ever be economically viable without governmental subsidies, given that coverage is most needed in the least affluent regions. **Open questions** - Will Ambient IoT actually attract legitimate investment this time, or follow the pattern of prior 3GPP proposals that went nowhere? - How are the promised cloudified network functions and AI-based orchestration actually performing in deployed networks in 2026? **Highlights** > You can already do that: Keyword you want to be looking for is NTN (non terrestrial networks). The complexity is how you actually deploy this at scale and what you want the actual satellites to do: For example, there is the option of having the satellite be a "flying mirror" with minimal internal logic (transparent NTN: satellite is repeater) or a full gNB which can act as a "really tall cellphone tower" (regenerative NTN: satellite is basestation). NTN satellites induce some quite significant challenges compared to standard 5G networks. I think most people can already imagine that delay is a considerable challenge, but that is ultimately relatively easy to deal with by adjusting the constants (like HARQ timers) in the 5G standard. A bigger issue are things like extreme doppler shifts induced by the high speed of LEO satellites (27000 km/h), which means that your UE has to continuously pre-compensate for doppler shifts. Another bit of weirdness is that cell handovers are now "reversed" compared to ground systems: In ground systems the reason you need to switch cells is usually because you moved away into a different cell. In LEO systems the "tower" and therefore cell moves. If you don't want to have constant re-negotiations with the cell, you need to have some sophisticated beamforming on the satellite to keep the cell steered onto the same ground area (i.e. the cell needs to move from the POV of the satellite to stay stationary from the ground side). All of this is quite expensive, a lot more expensive than just having ground based hardware. From a purely economic POV these systems don't really make sense unless you have externalities like defense as a secondary argument. The catch 22 for NTN is (and arguably will always be) that it is the most worth it for regions far away from the existing network. However, since regions without cell coverage are almost surely not very affluent, they themselves cannot reasonably afford the extra expenses to justify a satellite communication system. There basically has to be governmental support from the defense or just "public good" coffers to make this reasonable. NTN will be a supplement for existing networks for the foreseeable future. > — [mattalex on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49037886) > Following on from the machinations of the O-RAN ALLIANCE, and the complete wheel-spinning nonsense that was OpenRAN, at least they're doing something nation-state agnostic. The last decade has been one long appeasement of China Telecom and Huawei by diminishing the value-add from proprietary SaaS and RAN vendor lock-in in the Euro and US Telecoms market. How are all those promised cloudified network functions in k8s containers with the much vaunted 'AI' based orchestration and life-cycle management doing in 2026? > — [piltdownman on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036833) > Hi Telco nerds! It's looking like 3GPP is shifting away from faster networks and into networks that are programmable, energy-budgeted platforms. Anybody doing experiments with components where power is transmitted by a transport provider? Ambient IoT sounds like a classic 3GPP proposal that utterly fails because every time they publish, nobody follows on with legitimate investment. Am I too cynical? > — [0o\_MrPatrick\_o0 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036586) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036136) · 37 points · 18 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A third of the world is now connected to 5G](https://daily.dev/posts/a-third-of-the-world-is-now-connected-to-5g-hqdfhrkgd) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [IEEE Spectrum's Top Telecom Stories of 2025](https://daily.dev/posts/ieee-spectrum-s-top-telecom-stories-of-2025-o8meodh4g) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Western governments seek to lock down 6G before it exists](https://daily.dev/posts/western-governments-seek-to-lock-down-6g-before-it-exists-lv9z3o2e1) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#tech-news](https://daily.dev/tags/tech-news) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/3gpp-version-19-wsf5wefxg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"3GPP Version 19","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/3gpp-version-19-wsf5wefxg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/3gpp-version-19-wsf5wefxg"},"datePublished":"2026-07-24T16:13:36.443Z","dateModified":"2026-07-24T19:13:17.952Z","description":"3GPP Release 19, the second 5G-Advanced release, has been completed with fully implementable specifications available as of December 2025. 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