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.

That's not the way AWS typically prices things--my guess is the hardware and setup costs will be baked into the monthly service charges.

Generally yes but outpost is a little different:

https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/

Either way this is just a guess :)

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.

Totally agree 100%. Text communication sucks sometimes, if we were talking over beers it would have taken 3-5 seconds to clear up.

I think it'll be cheaper. We're looking to get the home unit cost to $499 & zero fees

best thing is that you dont own the antenna, so Amz will prob rent out the remaining capacity.

Aren't small cells significantly cheaper?