Samsung and Qualcomm Validate Power Class 1 for 5G FWA on Virtualized RAN

Higher-Power FWA on vRAN Validated, But Commercial Data Still Missing

Samsung and Qualcomm announced industry-first validation of Power Class 1 for 5G fixed wireless access on a virtualized RAN on September 28, 2026. Power Class 1 permits higher transmit power in customer-premises equipment, which can extend coverage and reduce the cost per premises served in areas where fiber deployment is uneconomical. The validation positions Samsung and Qualcomm against established FWA suppliers including Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei, while also competing with cable, fiber, and satellite broadband.

The announcement does not include throughput figures, coverage radius, energy consumption, operator commitments, CPE availability, or commercial pricing. Without these details, procurement teams cannot evaluate whether the technology meets enterprise-grade uptime, latency, or symmetric-uplink requirements. The validation demonstrates technical feasibility but does not establish production readiness or confirm that operators will deploy the equipment at scale.

Why Power Class 1 Matters for Enterprise Buyers

Higher transmit power in FWA equipment improves link budgets, which translates to longer range from a single base station or better signal penetration in buildings. For enterprises, this could make FWA viable for branch offices, temporary sites, construction locations, rural facilities, and backup links where fiber installation is slow or expensive. The virtualized RAN architecture also supports open, multi-vendor deployments, which can reduce operator lock-in and potentially lower long-term infrastructure costs.

The practical buyer question is whether operators will commit to deploying Samsung and Qualcomm's equipment and publish the service-level agreements, coverage maps, and pricing necessary to compare FWA against fiber and cable alternatives. Until operators release this data, enterprises should not assume that higher-power FWA is available in their markets or meets their bandwidth and latency requirements.

Ericsson and Nex-Tech Deploy Cloud-Native 5G Across 85% of Rural Kansas RAN

Ericsson and Nex-Tech Wireless signed a four-year network modernization agreement covering approximately 85% of Nex-Tech's rural Kansas RAN footprint, announced September 11. The deployment includes a cloud-native 5G standalone core and network-hosting capabilities that let other mobile operators share infrastructure. The agreement positions Ericsson as a rural, cloud-native 5G modernization platform rather than only a radio supplier.

Enterprises operating in rural Kansas could gain access to a more modern 5G SA network, but the announcement does not provide rollout milestones, capacity figures, pricing, service-level commitments, or enterprise customer counts. Buyers should verify location-specific coverage and whether network-hosting or private-network services are commercially available before budgeting for new connectivity or migrating existing sites. The 85% scope means 15% of Nex-Tech's footprint will remain outside the modernization effort, so premises in those areas may see no near-term improvement.

FWA Equipment Shipments Forecast to Rise 16% in 2026

The Global mobile Suppliers Association forecasts 2026 FWA CPE shipments to rise 16% to 23 million units. 5G devices are expected to represent nearly 70% of shipments, while 5G standalone-capable FWA shipments are projected to grow 34% to 15.4 million units, from 11.5 million in 2025. The projected scale should improve vendor availability and increase pressure on operators and suppliers to support standardized, 5G SA-capable CPE.

These are forecasts, not audited shipments or enterprise adoption figures. They do not establish that a particular operator can meet enterprise-grade uptime, latency, or symmetric-uplink requirements. Buyers should treat the forecast as evidence of equipment momentum, not as confirmation that FWA is ready to replace fiber for primary connectivity at scale.

What to Watch

The most consequential near-term question is whether Samsung and Qualcomm's higher-power vRAN FWA validation becomes a commercial product with published coverage, uplink, SLA, and pricing data. Enterprises considering FWA for primary or backup connectivity should ask operators for location-specific coverage maps, guaranteed uplink and latency figures, CPE availability, power-consumption data, and SLA terms. Without this information, Power Class 1 validation remains a technology milestone rather than a procurement option.

Buyers should also monitor whether Ericsson and Nex-Tech publish rollout milestones, capacity figures, and enterprise service-level commitments for the Kansas deployment. The network-hosting model could reduce capital requirements for smaller operators and improve rural coverage, but only if operators translate infrastructure modernization into commercially available enterprise services.