Solutions for interference aware uplink cell selection for a user equipment (UE) include: determining a path loss (PL) between the UE and a considered cell; determining a PL between the UE and a neighbor cell; based on at least the PL between the UE and the considered cell and the PL between the UE and the neighbor cell, determining a cell with an uplink frequency band having a minimum relative PL for the UE; and assigning, to the UE, the cell with the uplink frequency band having the minimum relative PL. In some examples, the network includes both 5G and 4G cells. Some examples include determining whether the PL for the cell having the minimum relative PL for the UE meets a PL threshold and if so, assigning, to the UE, the cell with the uplink frequency band having the minimum absolute PL for the UE.