Presented herein are techniques to facilitate dynamic switching for user equipment between unique cell and shared cell operating modes based on application traffic. In one example, a method may include determining, a quality of service (QoS) to be provided for a traffic flow of a user equipment (UE) in which the mobile network includes a radio access network (RAN) including a plurality of radio units (RUs) in which at least two RUs provides a shared cell and each RU provides a unique cell; identifying an operating mode for the UE based on the QoS in which the operating mode indicates whether the traffic flow is to be communicated using a shared cell or a unique cell operating mode; and causing the UE to communicate the traffic flow using the shared cell the unique cell operating mode.