February 25, 2026
CloudRAN.AI and Firecell Partner to Cut the Cost and Complexity of Private 5G
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BREAKING NEWS: Firecell and Accelleran Merge to Deliver Sovereignty-Compliant Industrial Private 5G Learn more
Many regulators worldwide are making a dedicated chunk of spectrum available for Enterprise and Industrial Private 5G Networks
The main motivations to begin standardizing the next generation of mobile cellular technology were an increase in the number of devices, the growth in the amount of data consumption on these devices, and the need for new applications and services. Often these requirements are the catalyst for making more spectrum available.
New use cases foreseen to be enabled by 5G like autonomous vehicles, remote healthcare, drone delivery networks, enterprise networks, industrial automation, and smart cities prepared the industry to work on higher frequencies, which were underutilized, to enable ubiquitous and robust communications.
Most of the advanced 5G use cases, higher frequency millimeter wave spectrum, and even 5G Standalone networks which form the basis for these use cases, have failed to materialize in any significant quantities. The only exception being Private 5G Networks that continue to present advanced 5G features to enterprises and industries.
These enterprise and industrial Private 5G Networks rely on dedicated RF spectrum to deliver optimal results.
Since the early days of 5G, many mobile operators embarked on the three-layer strategy to ensure that their 5G networks can meet the demands of different consumers. The 5G Spectrum Layer Cake analogy was introduced to simply explain the three-tiered spectrum approach.
The low-band spectrum typically covers frequencies below 1 GHz. It is often referred to as the ‘platinum band’ or ‘premium band’ due to its excellent coverage and building penetration ability.
In many countries, the 600 MHz to 800 MHz bands were historically used for analog TV broadcasting. As those services migrated to digital formats, the spectrum was reallocated for mobile broadband, which is why these bands are also sometimes referred to as the “digital dividend” band.
Advantages: The main advantage of this band, as already mentioned, is its ability to provide broad geographical coverage and strong penetration through obstacles like walls and buildings. It is for this reason that this layer is referred to as the coverage layer.
Challenges: The main challenge for this band is the limited amount of spectrum availability. This band by itself would only be able to provide limited throughput which would neither satisfy end-users nor most 5G use-cases.
Deployment Strategy: The ideal use of this band is to provide coverage to rural and remote areas that may not receive any other signals. In addition, this band serves as an anchor layer for 4G/5G networks with multiple bands in operation either using carrier aggregation or dual connectivity. In this particular case, the low-band ensures that the signaling is reliable which ensures basic mobile services can be handled reliably.
The low-band and the mid-band spectrum together comprises 3GPP defined frequency range 1 (FR1). The mid-band consists of frequency above 1 GHz, all the way up to the FR1 upper range of 7.125 GHz.
This upper range was earlier set to 6 GHz based on the outcome of agreements from world radio conference 2015 (WRC-15). This range was revised to 7.125 GHz based on IEEE agreeing to use this new range for Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be).
The mid-band spectrum can be further split into the FDD based layer generally comprising of frequencies up to 2.6 GHz and TDD based layer comprising of frequencies above 2.3 GHz. For public and private 5G, the C-band, containing 3GPP defined n77/78 is the most popular band in use.
Advantages: The main advantage of mid-band spectrum is that this can provide a perfect mix of good coverage and throughput. This is why this band is often referred to as capacity layer. There is also a reasonable amount of spectrum available worldwide that allows larger bandwidths to be allocated for public as well as private networks.
Challenges: The main challenge is that for the public mobile networks, these bands don’t go as far as low-band spectrum, hence the network deployment can sometimes be a bit challenging. Also, as we move to higher-band spectrum, the mode of operation has to change from frequency division duplex (FDD) to time division duplex (TDD). This has a stricter requirement for synchronization between the cells to reduce interference.
Deployment Strategy: The mid-band is the backbone for providing high-speed mobile broadband. While it’s ideal for densely populated areas, it is extensively used in urban and suburban areas where a balance between capacity, speed, and coverage is needed. This band is also ideal for private networks as they provide a good indoor coverage with small cells without having to worry too much about the radio waves leaking outdoors.
The high-band spectrum comprises of frequencies above 24 GHz, up to 71 GHz. In 3GPP terminology, this is generally referred to as frequency range 2 (FR2). As this spectrum is very close to millimeter wave band (starting at 30 GHz), sometimes this whole band is referred to as millimeter wave (mmWave) band.
Advantages: There is a lot of spectrum available in mmWave band. This allows regulators to allocate a large chunk of spectrum to each operator. It is not uncommon for operators to gain access to 400/800 MHz bandwidth in these bands.
Challenges: The main challenge, which is also why this band is not yet popular in deployments despite numerous trials, is that the range is short and the radio waves cannot travel through walls or any kind of obstruction. This limits the scenarios where these bands can be used.
Deployment Strategy: These bands have been used in quite a few countries for fixed-wireless access (FWA) to provide high speed mobile broadband at homes and offices. In addition, the large bandwidth can supplement end user data rates outdoors in densely populated areas such as old town, downtown, city centers or central business districts. Research is ongoing to exploit this band for use in connected vehicles where line of sight is not an issue.
While 5G can be deployed in existing bands that were used for 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE, the most popular band used in practice for 5G deployments has been the C-band, which the 3GPP refers to as n77/n78.
As can be seen in the image above, n78 band is actually a subset of n77 band. To avoid confusion, people in the industry often use n77 to refer to the frequencies after n78. So even though n77 covers 3300 – 4200 MHz, people may be implying n77 to mean 3800 – 4200 MHz. To avoid any confusion during planning and deployments, it is always wise to check what n77 means for all parties involved in any discussions related to that band.
Band 48 or n48 refers to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band that is used exclusively in the USA. The deployments in this band include 4G/LTE, 5G, as well as some proprietary technologies.
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) produces multitude of reports looking at various aspects of mobile cellular technology. Their report of 5G spectrum detail the most popular bands used for public 5G while their report on private networks detail the most popular bands used for private 4G/5G networks. A collage of images from their reports can be seen in the image below:
The image highlights the bands by popularity. The left hand graph shows the bands for public 5G networks while the right hand graph shows the bands for private networks.
Both these graphs clearly illustrate the popularity of C-band, which is exclusively used for 5G public/private networks. Most smartphones and other popular consumer devices support C-band spectrum, as well as the industrial devices and modems that are supporting these and other popular mid-band spectrum.
The regulators worldwide have recognized the importance of dedicated mid-band spectrum for private networks which is reflected in the spectrum auctions and allocations. The enterprises and industries have in return utilized these bands to examine and deploy them for their use cases.
As highlighted in our previous blog posts and whitepapers, the availability of dedicated spectrum for Private 5G Networks has given rise to innovative use cases in various industries and enterprises. It has now become possible for these industries to fine-tune their network’s performance to meet the specific demands of their use cases.
In addition to not having to worry about radio interference from unknown and unexpected sources, these Private 5G Networks offer more control, security, and reliability compared to traditional public networks, enabling enterprises to support critical applications with higher performance and greater flexibility.
It is no surprise that the industries are now embarking on the journey to use these Private 5G Networks to support and improve their industrial automation use cases. We will look into this topic in detail in a future white paper.
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