When you’re up against brutal terrain — dense trees, heavy forests, and tough topography — wireless internet deployment options narrow fast. You either pay for expensive licensed spectrum or turn to CBRS, a public-use radio band that delivers the signal strength needed to punch through obstructions and bring rural broadband and edge devices online.

For most WISPs, licensed spectrum simply isn’t financially practical. That’s why CBRS has become the innovation core of the WISP industry and often serves as the anchor spectrum for solving these last-mile challenges.

There are powerful platforms on the market, like the Tarana G1, that take full advantage of CBRS. Tarana G1 is absolutely excellent and able to deliver fiber performance to locations that would be impossible through traditional fixed wireless 5GHZ, 60GHZ, and 2.4GHZ solutions.

Photo Credit: https://www.taranawireless.com/g1-platform/

Unfortunately, Tarana’s price point remains out of reach for many operators without substantial grant funding, a large and profitable existing subscriber base, or outside investment. While an outstanding product, the economic reality is that Tarana is often beyond what self-funded WISPs can sustainably deploy — leaving many still searching for more accessible alternatives.

This is where LTE/5G steps in. On paper, it can offer a potentially cheaper solution to these same connectivity challenges. But as always, nothing comes for free.

LTE is hard. Very hard.

The LTE/5G ecosystem is fragmented, complex, and full of obstacles that prevent small-to-midsize operators from successfully deploying it. Many non-ISP network operators avoid it as well, even though LTE/5G is often one of the best options for connecting edge devices and remote sites that will power tomorrow’s AI-driven applications.

The Pitfalls That Stop Most LTE Deployments

This isn’t easy tech to work with. Even for seasoned network operators, LTE/5G brings a long list of landmines that you don’t normally deal with in a typical ISP or other general network environment. Some of the biggest challenges include:

LTE/5G network architecture: LTE doesn’t drop neatly into a standard ISP model. You have to learn entirely new concepts like the separation of control and user plane traffic, S1 interfaces, bearer management, and how the EPC actually moves packets.

Packet core selection and deployment: Commercial cores are expensive and often built for large carriers, not WISPs. Open-source cores exist, but getting one stable and predictable enough for production takes real work and troubleshooting.

RAN hardware quality: Choosing radios is risky. Some have well-documented manufacturing defects that aren’t obvious on paper. In my own deployments, I’ve seen vendors knowingly ship hardware with known issues across different brands and models. You’ll hear sales people and consultants say things like:

• “Yeah, the radio heads on that unit are garbage from the factory”
• “Oh yeah, once you start loading customers on these, they fall on their face.”
• “The GPS devices on these have a tendency to just fail.”
• “The only way to get firmware for this model is an expensive support agreement.”
• “Yep, those radios have a tendency to lose the 3rd and 4th radio heads at unpredictable times requiring a reboot”
• “So this radio is bricked, only way to fix it is three-level deep Inception level SSH and some undocumented commands. And actually that might not work either TBH. You may just be screwed”.
• “Yeah, this RRH/RRU model is so bad, we use them as chairs around the office.”

Talk about a dumpster fire! The devices being referred to above are still for sale in many places from vendors that know of these issues. I’m not sure how that’s even possible but here we are. The only way to know about these traps apparently is just pure hustle and experimentation. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll learn of these issues from friends in the industry over a Moscow Mule.

If this doesn’t sound like a nightmare to you, I don’t know what a nightmare even is. No wonder LTE isn’t more broadly deployed!

And this doesn’t even touch on other trip-mines like back-haul stability, spectrum coordination, S1 traffic management, SAS, and more.

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I recently presented at ALANOG-06, our local NANOG-affiliated group, where I gave a fast-paced overview of LTE/5G deployment. I covered RAN hardware configurations, packet core options, and real-world deployment examples. I also presented on Rapid5GS, a deployment script I built that allows operators to spin up a fully functional LTE packet core on a $65 computer in under 5 minutes after Linux is installed.

If you’re a WISP, small business, or operator looking at LTE/5G, this talk will give you a solid foundation of how to set these networks up on a micro scale and what you need for a successful deployment. It slashes through the noise and gets to what’s relevant – if this talk had existed earlier, I’d be easily 12 months ahead of where I am today on several LTE deployment projects. The full presentation is available on YouTube below:

You can download the full PowerPoint of this presentation by clicking here in the PDF format.

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Need help designing and deploying LTE/5G for your organization?

I’ve built and operated real-world LTE networks, made some mistakes, and know some traps. I can help you skip months of wasted time, bad hardware, and consultants who don’t fully understand the realities of smaller operators.

DM me if you want help. I’m available for hire and can get started immediately.