I'd love to see _some_ pricing estimates. There's a good amount I'd pay to get something like this for some rural communities, but it's unclear if I'm anywhere near able to afford it.
I have some experience building rural cellular networks (4G and starting to work on 5G), and can say that the core network part of the network is usually not the biggest challenge. There are open source cores available that actually work quite well for basic Internet access (magma has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread), and open5gs is another one. They can be deployed on lightweight edge infrastructure or in the cloud, since the computational overhead for the core is not huge for a small network (10s-100s of devices). SIM cards can be purchased pretty easily online from a variety of sources. There are even already existing turnkey solutions with a core network hosted in the cloud providing a management portal that integrates directly with like-branded radios (see Baicells).
Getting outdoor radios for rural access installed though is a bit more challenging, and I would be surprised if AWS was offering an outdoor solution here in the short term. Directional antennas and radio planning become a lot more important. There are a couple different players who will sell outdoor CBRS radios in small volume who all have pluses and minuses. CBRS is great for rural areas since there are often GAA channels available, but depending on the terrain may or may not provide huge area coverage. CBRS limits the height above average terrain and power you can deploy at. There are limits to the types of equipment and locations you can deploy without getting a professional installer certification. Getting the certification slightly raises those limits, but they are still something you need to take into account for wide-area access. You can actually get the CPI certification pretty easily via online classes offered by the different SAS (spectrum access service) providers. If you’re seriously considering founding a cellular wisp, there are some Facebook (unfortunately haha) groups out there that are pretty active and where you can get shoptalk questions answered about specific radios and technologies!
IMO the main value add from the AWS solution here is the access control, monitoring/auditing, and QoS management they are offering, which would be essential in an industrial setting, especially if running sensitive services over the network.
Probably a small outpost deployment + RF gear, so (guessing) $500K up front and $10-20k/mo. I don't know if it's possible to get RDOF grants for individual communities but that might cover some of it.
In addition to the gear, would you have to license the spectrum from someone? I think the fcc already auctioned it all off? Or does that not apply here? Any idea what that would cost?
I don’t know the details there. Presumably there would be at least be cost for someone to maintain the paperwork and equipment certification. There’s a couple comments in here about this being on CBRS, possibly more info there.
Per https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/faqs/ it is, indeed, CBRS. And it seems like if you have other frequencies in your possession, you can use those, too.
Even with Outposts you're not "buying" the rack (Amazon still owns it and takes it away at the end of the term), you're just committing to keeping it long enough for them to make money on it. The choice of paying upfront or paying monthly is roughly the same money management strategy available with any AWS service (e.g. EC2 Reserved Instances), and likely is more about lining up with capex/opex decisions than actual cost savings.
What's next? Own your own island as a service™? I really like the direction AWS is headed and I like how they're opening up access to hard to setup hardware.
