alt Hacker NewsData would have been unlimited at the company's own locations of course.
And it would have worked similarly to managed WiFi. Lots of companies outsource their WiFi and network. Many don't want to have that knowledge in house. Basically the provider would play the role of network outsourcing party inside the office and the outdoor connectivity would be more of a value-add.
The benefit would have been much higher speeds due to much more available bandwidth (way more than even 6Ghz WiFi), more security (people can't just poke at it with some packet injectors), less interference due to managed spectrum, higher density due to the beamforming and low penetration. Oh and it would have improved phone connectivity inside those buildings to boot. It could be combined with VPN/MPLS like connectivity so that laptops would always be behind the firewall even outdoors without having to run a VPN client.
This was also the pitch that led to those laptops with 5G built in that intel and Qualcomm were on about (Qualcomm was heavily trying to get into the laptop market back then). But it kinda stalled. I don't think it was a bad pitch though. It also came at a time when people weren't actually working in the office due to the pandemic and it lost momentum, beside the chicken and egg problem.
I could really see this taking off under the right conditions. But the whole laptop with mmWave isn't a thing anymore now. Perhaps 6G will bring a renewed push with it. Personally I don't think it's a bad pitch at all.
The problem is control of the network. If you don't control your network, then you don't know if network provider will go from "unlimited data" to "I am changing the deal now it is 1USD/GB" and you can either take it or be without connection which would likely collapse your operations. So the only logical step is to use network which you have full control over, like WiFi.
The much higher speed also does not hold together when you will look at it. When you have a device which is generating or processing a lot of data (GB/s ~ TB/s) such device needs substantial computational power to pull it off, so it is likely a stationary device connected to 230V. So why won't you drag a fiber there?