As part of their senior project Matthew May & Brendan Harlow of Champlain College worked on a project that involved creating their own software defined radio based portable cell phone network. If you're interested their setup is nicely documented on their project page. Basically it consists of a bladeRF software defined radio and Raspberry Pi running the YateBTS base station software. This is nothing new in terms of work done before, but the clear documentation makes it a good starting point for anyone looking at building their own SDR based cell basestation. 

A custom cell basestation may be useful for those in remote areas without commercial cell phone reception, during disasters or even just to create a type of secondary network in your home.

[Also seen on Hackaday and Motherboard]