> The availability of hardware seems semi moot, since afaik there's basically no way to get spectrum short of big national auctions.
You can run 5G in the unlicensed spectrum. AWS can rent you hardware for it: https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/ - it's $5k a month per site. I know a plant that switched to that because they couldn't get WiFi to work reliably for them.
But even if you want to run within the licensed spectrum, local licenses for a couple of bands are cheap. I was involved in setting up a private network in the licensed spectrum around 10 years ago (based on https://aviatnetworks.com/ ), and a local site spectrum license was something ridiculously small (in the range of a hundred dollars).
You can run 5G in the unlicensed spectrum. AWS can rent you hardware for it: https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/ - it's $5k a month per site. I know a plant that switched to that because they couldn't get WiFi to work reliably for them.
But even if you want to run within the licensed spectrum, local licenses for a couple of bands are cheap. I was involved in setting up a private network in the licensed spectrum around 10 years ago (based on https://aviatnetworks.com/ ), and a local site spectrum license was something ridiculously small (in the range of a hundred dollars).
It's expensive if you want to do it nation-wide.