In my experience there is (or at least was) very strong animosity between HAMs and people who build networks of this kind. To some extent I view that as conflict between doing things "the right way" and "it works, so what".
Amateur radio also has a lot of rules, and you have some people whose primary interest in the hobby seems to be tearing down other peoples work by citing FCC (or equivalent) regs.
I'm thinking in particular about the rule that encryption is banned on amateur bands, which really makes it not suitable for general internet access. More sensible people just ignore those rules, and that creates animosity with the above-mentioned group.
Well, hams are doing their thing on their bands, and if somebody comes in and stomps all over the bands (cough WINLINK cough) it's kind of a dick move. Luckily, most of the ham bands are so low in frequency that they're not really suitable for general Internet access.
2m could get you dialup speeds over a pretty wide radius with some cheap equipment. Get a directional antenna and a hilltop repeater and you'd be in even better shape. The FCC absolutely could shave off a small chunk of the 2m band for encryption-OK Internet links (say, as a way to link up smaller wifi nets), but you're right, most hams would kick and scream even though they all just sit idle on whatever local repeater. And I'd have a hard time blaming them (I'm a ham myself) because they do not want to set a precedent of losing any band space.
High-power wifi is allowed with an amateur radio license, but because you're operating as an amateur licensee you're not allowed to use encryption, so you can't use it to e.g. bring Internet access to a remote RV park.
Sure, rules on maximum transmit power and such make sense, to ensure emissions do not interfere with other users. But why should a licensed amateur not be able to transmit on the bands using encryption, provided the transmission is clearly marked with the callsign of the operator?
As it is right now, it makes packet radio pretty much useless, because you can't use it for internet access, since you'd most likely end up accessing TLS services.
I'm on the same page here with you--I agree that packet radio is pretty useless for internet access. It's pretty useless for anything except talking to other amateur radio operators, and all they want to talk about is radio and, sometimes, Obama.
But that's what the amateur service is, it's people playing with radios because they think radios are cool. Because it's mostly real-time conversations, the bands aren't insanely congested; if I tried to fetch my email over an encrypted signal on the 40m band, I'm going to tie up a big chunk of the available frequencies for possibly hours on end (cough yacht owners running WINLINK cough).
You'd have to eliminate the "no commercial business" rule too, because fetching your mining operation's email looks pretty similar to browsing ham forums when everything is encrypted.
I'm thinking in particular about the rule that encryption is banned on amateur bands, which really makes it not suitable for general internet access. More sensible people just ignore those rules, and that creates animosity with the above-mentioned group.