The 5g initiative is taking two distinct forms this week with the Pentagon readying an open radio access network stack and commercial operators launching nationwide services.
The Defense Department's FutureG office plans to publish the first version of the Open Centralized Unit Distributed Unit software project called OCUDU to GitHub in April, according to the department.
The effort is a collaboration between the FutureG office, which the office said is overseen by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and the non profit National Spectrum Consortium.
After awarding a contract in September 2025, the National Spectrum Consortium said DeepSig and partner Software Radio Systems built a functioning OCUDU codebase that developers can download and extend.
Officials said the Linux Foundation will provide oversight and the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation has 47 founding members including Ericsson, Nokia, Verizon, AT&T and NVIDIA, as reported by the project announcement.
FutureG officials described OCUDU as a way to break vendor lock and to let commercial and military developers test new network functions and apps without starting from scratch, the office said.
Developers will be able to prototype features ranging from energy and spectrum efficiency to AI enabled network management, the project noted, with partners such as the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific and the Georgia Tech Research Institute lined up for military use case testing.
Commercial Launches And Industry Impact
In parallel, ZTE and XLSMART said they launched XL Ultra 5G+ commercial service in Indonesia and claimed the country’s first nationwide 5G blanket coverage, with Ookla validation as Indonesia's fastest 5G network in H2 2025.
ZTE and XLSMART reported peak downlink speeds of up to 769 Mbps during a Surabaya launch event and average experienced speeds exceeding 500 Mbps, and said the rollout had reached 24 of 33 5G cities by January 2026.
The partners stated they integrated more than 20,000 4G base stations and deployed over 7,000 new 5G base stations to advance network quality and resilience, and they cited AI driven tools Mongoose and VMAX for real time optimization.
At the XL Ultraverse Festival in Surabaya, which attracted tens of thousands of attendees, organisers said peak concurrent connected users exceeded 10,000 and reported smooth 4K streaming and cloud gaming.
A March 1, 2026 explainer on 5g noted faster speeds and lower latency will let advertisers use richer video, interactive 3D and augmented reality formats, enable real time personalisation and expand advertising touchpoints beyond smartphones.
The same explainer warned of higher production costs for immersive ads, increased data use for consumers with limited plans and varied regional adoption that will affect how quickly these formats reach scale.
