Here are two projects that I've found helpful to understand the possibilities.

Helium - https://www.helium.com/ Building out wireless infrastructure for both IoT devices and 5G more recently

Arweave - https://www.arweave.org/ Provides a permanent storage solution where you pay once upfront

They are both building a new decentralized network to provide a service and using tokens to share ownership in the network and align incentives.

Of course it's too early to say whether they will succeed in their respective mission.

Disclaimer: Not affiliated with either project but I do work in Web3