[api]

On the higher speed front: has anyone looked into 802.11ah (900mhz wifi) or any of the smart "TV white space" stuff? It's standardized but I can't find any hardware on the market. There is a company near us (Irvine, CA) that apparently has an 802.11ah chipset but no cards or USB versions and emails go strangely unanswered. Found them since they had a press release about hitting like a few tens of megabits at over a kilometer on very low power and a small omnidirectional antenna.

[jlgaddis]

Motorola (Canopy) used to make a bunch of 900 MHz (ISM) radios that were popular with WISPs. They weren't technically Wi-Fi but a proprietary protocol.

I can't recall if Ubiquiti ever had any 900 MHz radios or not but they have plenty in the 2.4/5 GHz (unlicensed) bands as well as the 3.65 GHz (licensed) bands that would probably serve your needs for cheap. Unfortunately, the 900 MHz band is getting quite crowded these days, leading to lots of interference and reduced "throughput".

Mimosa is another (younger) company making similar gear that's relatively cheap with good bang for the buck.

A place I do some work for has several 15-20 mile links (6/11 GHz) pushing ~500 Mbps although those are much more expensive.

[superkuh]

I run two ubiquiti nanostation M900 at home on a 10m pole and in my car through the sunroof for a mobile data link. Both use custom made omnidirectional antenna. Because my area is very hilly it's super intermittent but when it does work it's fast. The ethernet bridge in the car is shared to devices with either ethernet to the switch or 2.4GHz wifi with a tiny openwrt router.

As with all VHF and higher data comms what matters most is antenna height and line of sight. I can get 3km fine up on a big hill or lose signal only 300m away from home in other directions.