NSA can be rolled out with almost nothing more than a firmware update. For any existing carrier network, it was the obvious place to start 5G rollout.
replyIf you're building new towers, things change, obviously. That said, a lot of industrial/IoT hardware still requires 4G so it's not entirely unreasonable to deploy 4G in new coverage areas.
In other words - noone in real life is deploying 5G only infrastructure right now and won't for awhile.
replyMSR base stations are the norm in the industry, not a rarity.
And it also planned-obsoletes 4G only devices, a big win for the operators that can then sell new 5G capable ones. Such a racket I swear. Can't wait to go through this shit again for 6G in about 5 years, like we did for 3G.
replyThey can replace 2G/3G IoT with LTE, but cannot with 5G (due to energy consumption).
reply5G RedCap is the solution, but that will need new infrastructure and chipset. LTE will stay at least for another ten years.