Someone posted: "why do we need this?" By the time I was done writing my reply, they deleted their comment and HN wouldn't let me reply. But here is my reply:

Someone posted: "why do we need this?" By the time I was done writing my reply, they deleted their comment and HN wouldn't let me reply. But here is my reply: The demand comes from the fact that the vast majority of the world uses a cell phone as their primary computer. Paying for the Internet twice is a luxury they cannot afford. So it makes sense that the phone companies want to serve them. There is a fixed amount of spectrum available at lower frequencies that can travel longer distances, and we've used all that. So now the idea is to exploit higher frequencies where more bandwidth is available, but the trade-off is that the signals don't travel as far (attenuation by building surfaces, and even the air itself). So access points have to be closer together. The reality is that WiFi has never worked very well. Bandwidth is allocated poorly, mostly by accident. (Claiming there are 11 channels at 2.4GHz was a big lie that cost us dearly. Bad defaults at 5GHz led people to believe it was attenuated by walls, which it really isn't -- APs just chose channels that they were only allowed to use at lower power than the 2.4GHz channels.) Any time you've seen WiFi working well involves careful site surveys and complicated software that coordinates access over a backhaul (usually wired for the ones that work, but dual radio APs that use wireless backhaul appear to work in the lab -- nobody that I know of is selling them though). 5G is basically that, but owned by the incumbent carriers instead of individuals. They can coordinate access and steer devices to the right AP, which is the #1 thing that makes short-haul radio links reliable. I agree that the circumstances suck, but funding hardware R&D has to be paid for by someone. If you want to start a company to make a peer-to-peer radio network, I say go for it. People are interested. The hardware exists. But I think you'll find that to make money, you're going to have to charge people for access, and probably provide some sort of fallback to 4G/3G for people that are out of your service area. Guess who can provide that? The incumbents. So that's why they're doing it. It's not all bad, though. Someone has to provide backhaul for the APs, and they're often fiber. So fiber is not going away, and the technology will not stop being developed. It is likely that the fiber ISP that sells service to the cell phone companies will also be happy to sell it to you. It really comes down to how easy it is to lay the fiber to your location. In some cities, they built subways under every street for power and Internet (Manhattan has a huge network). In environments like that, it's easy for anyone to sell you a connection. I worked for an ISP that did exactly that, and it was great. The biggest barrier we had was buildings wanting to charge the ISP to provide service to the building. That isn't profitable for the ISP, so they simply say they can't serve you. My TL;DR is: encourage your municipality to make it easy to provide fiber to your location, and someone will. You can buy the necessary equipment to start a fiber ISP with a credit card. I say go for it.