This is the key. Look at the roadblocks Google Fiber has hit in their own fiber deployments, pivoting to wireless to bypass the resistance they're getting from incumbents.
I'm interested to see how this plays out. When I looked into it, it seemed hard to compete with wired broadband internet. I think wireless has the best chance in areas where people's only option is satellite or dial-up.
Because there's only so much wireless spectrum and at some point you saturate the link. Plus interference from other carriers reduces the capacity of the link.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's also not obvious to me that wireless is better in dense areas, especially since the main cost in wired internet is laying the cable in the first place, which is easier to do cost effectively when you have an urban market to offer service to.
It depends on whether it is licensed or unlicensed spectrum. Some of the technology is in ISM bands that anyone can use.
In either case, the channels still have capacity limits. I'm not saying it's impossible, which is partly why I brought it up in the first place. I was hoping someone more knowledgeable would chime in. The main advantage wires have is you can just run more of them when you reach your capacity (or in some cases you can just change the hardware at either end of the wire to newer technology).
Are there any US carriers that are using unlicensed / shares spectrum?
The bandwidth is only limited per tower, you can easily double the throughput of a given area by doubling the number of cell towers (and reducing power to avoid interference). It’s a lot cheaper to build a new tower than to run new wires to 200 homes (permits and all). On top of that 5g gives 10x bandwidth over 4g in the same band.