True and the German government was very "wise" to auction every last arfcn of their spectrum so no one will attempt to do teaching or R&D in Germany.

But not every country tried that hard, e.g. in the Netherlands one can broadcast with low power (e.g. have your own indoor/campus wide network) or in the US spectrum can be licensed for smaller regions.

Functioning can mean a lot of things. A security researcher trying to downgrade a device from 4G to 3G and then to 2G will be quite happy with a single eNodeB/nodeB/BTS set-up and is glad about low output power. A company to provide coverage on their campus can be quite happy too.