Spectrum is finite though. You can add more fixed clients by adding more hardware at the CO and running more fibre. Eventually, even if no one is even actively downloading, your cellular network will saturate just from the number of clients.

The same is true of wireless networks today. An 802.11n wifi network is also limited by the number of clients, even if none of them are consuming their share of bandwidth.

Assuming omnidirectional antennas.

If you aim well enough, that finite spectrum is only shared by a handful of clients.

You could go even further and construct some kind of copper tube to send your radio signals down.

Yes, having a lot of antennas on the base station is just like attaching a mile-long cable to your cell phone.

Why run a copper tube kilometers when a point to point microwave will be way cheaper?

Rain

As long as latency still matters. Gigabit wireless service can certainly be usable for a broad range of consumer applications, but you still have people playing online games, streaming, etc. that are heavily impacted by latency.

Personally, I wish I could get a decent 100/10 fiber connection in my area just for the latency advantages over DOCSIS alone (it takes roughly 10ms to even get out of my ISP's internal network onto their transit provider).

Nothing about wireless inherently causes more than a millisecond of latency. It's all about system design.

Modern LTE latency is comparable to DSL/Cable at <=30ms in many cases. Sure fiber latency is lower, but until that is available to the same amount of people as DSL/Cable the mobile technology will have advanced too. Online gaming and streaming is totally fine over a LTE connection, the only problem is bandwidth caps. (This might not apply to professional gamers, but i consider those a niche)

30ms is abysmal.

That's roughly the transit latency from Texas to the coasts. By your logic even a fiber link from Texas to NYC will have "abysmal" latency.

It's totally fine for any kind of realtime online interactions though, unless you are a super competitive gamer, but even then many do not have access to fiber and still do well Also note that i am saying "lower than or equal", my current LTE connection gives me 18ms ping to nearby locations, same as my cable connection.

+VR

Latency's going to be a real bear if it takes off and multi-user applications prove popular.

The Telstra LTE bandwidth is extremely expensive too at around $5 per Gigabyte, so their test of just 180GB would have cost about USD $75.

I get 10$ per GB. :(

I ditched Tesltra for the Aldi (Telstra 4G reseller) year-long pre-paid plan when they offered it for a short time.

42GB for $250 = $6/GB.