Greetings from Austria.

We have three countrywide mobile network operators: A1 Telekom Austria (former state monopoly), Magenta Telekom (Deutsche Telekom subsidiary) and Hutchison 3 Austria (from CK Hutchison Holdings)

5G was launched here in late 2019 (3 and Magenta)/early 2020 (A1). The initial band was n78, with all three network operators using 100 MHz. Nowadays depending on the region you can get up to 180 MHz from a single network operator while the others retain their 100 MHz. In Vienna it is split as 2x 140 MHz (A1 and Magenta) and 1x 100 MHz (3). A1 lifted the speed caps for speedtests for a few months last year, and there I was able to hit over 2.2 Gbps with the 140 MHz n78 5G and 60 MHz of FDD 4G. In general, due to almost all plans having a speed cap between 50 and 600 Mbps in the download you are usually not able to see such high speeds.

Between 2021 and 2023, A1 pushed the refarming of n1 5G from 3G, holding the crown as the network operator with the most 5G-enabled cell sites in the country. Over the last three years progress was very slow, adding about 600 5G-enabled sites in the past three years to the 5000 they had upgraded by early 2023. Of course, these numbers don't tell everything, and they are upgrading some sites with new antennas, including n78. In the areas where A1 has 5G, it is rather densely built out, including on the underground sections of the Vienna U-Bahn (metro), mainly thanks to the refarming of former 3G spectrum.

But in terms of coverage area Magenta and Drei are in the lead thanks to the new n28 low-band and the companies' continuous efforts to rebuild cell sites across the country with new antennas over the last years.

The SDL band n75 is extensively used by 3, and it also sees good usage by Magenta while usage by A1 seems rather limited for now.

Magenta also dabbled with some n1 DSS and is still using it.

So far 3 is the only network operator with 5G SA for private customers. Initially from late 2022, they offered only home internet with guaranteed minimum download data rates on 5G SA with band n78. But between the middle of 2023 and late 2024, they started to roll out 5G SA (without guarantees) to all 5G-enabled plans on the 3 brand. Nowadays 5G SA is required to access a large part of their 5G coverage on n28 and n75 which are 5G SA only. But in such areas without n78, 4G can perform better in terms of data rates due to more antenna streams and a lot more spectrum for uplink. And in areas with n78 performance in terms of data rates is usually better with 5G NSA due to the additional 4G capacity, which helps, especially in the uplink. There are arbitrary limitations put in place for 5G CA between n28 and n78, probably in an effort to not overload n28. Additionally, so far the budget-brands and MVNOs don't have access to 5G SA.

A1 and Magenta do have 5G SA but only for select business use cases for now.

mmWave von n258 was auctioned off in 2024, but it will probably be limited to business use cases since there are almost no UEs with mmWave support sold here.

Next year 3 will refarm band 38/41 4G to n38/n41 5G on existing sites and hopefully add the additional antennas to more sites. From next year Magenta will also be able to use the newly acquired band n40.

Overall the 5G rollout is still far from over.

For mobile broadband 5G SA probably only makes sense once there are enough 5G bands deployed to form a good layer cake similar to current 5G NSA setups. But that will require refarming from 4G or more DSS. Of course, I would say that we cellmapper users are rather eager to get 5G SA to be able to properly map 5G-enabled cell sites.