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Not free, and not 802.11b/g/? . Something more like Motorola's Canopy which has far better range and performance characteristics.

Some of us are just paranoid.
So what? It's harder to sniff than cable, ethernet, or dsl.

And besides, most wireless point-multipoint systems do encrypt all traffic or sell the option.

For instance:
http://motorola.canopywireless.com/solutions/isp/
http://www.alvarion.com/bwawimaxnewbreezenetb100/

Have experience using Motorola Canopy wireless products. Usually any point-to-point link uses the 10 or 20 meg backhaul units. The speed is quite fast for a 20 meg unit. Two backhaul units should run you under 10k. Canopy uses a propritary signal between all units. All three of my warehouses use canopy units.

http://canopywireless.com/

Check out the Motorola Canopy system. Point-to-point speeds up to 300Mbps available.

http://motorola.canopywireless.com/

If nothing else, you can always get yourself a Canopy backhaul rig and do your co-op, probably for less than the cost of 1 month of a T1 in that sort of area.

The trick at that point is to find a community that is served well enough that you can feed the one end of the system. Of course, finding a fairly clear LOS between both ends can be fun. At least the equipment is a one-time cost as opposed to an ongoing cost

You mean like Motorola Canopy?

Competition for Motorola Canopy.

...the first serious effort to install wireless (not counting the expensive and limited cellphone guys) is being done using motorola canopy tech. Last I talked to them they were putting it up two weeks ago so I don't know the status yet. I have no other information on it other than the guys doing it decided after a lot of looking that it would work the best for the long distance and hills and trees around here. They were running 802.11 at a truckstop, but the range was extremely limited, basically the parking lot and a little more. They wanted something better and *now*, not wait for wimax or whatever other blimp in the sky scheme is coming, and 802.11xx just don't cut the mustard without quite a few access points. I have no idea what it costs or the hardware requirements, but that should be easy enough to find out at motorola's site. If it works and I can get broadband from those guys, they get my loot. There's been no offers from anyone else for any broadband around here, not even lowest common denominator xDSL. With that said, two different additional satellite providers are scheduled to start offering services soon, so there will be some competition there as well, but that's later this summer last I checked on that.

Really unfortunate name, as at Motorola there is a Canopy Group that is doing some pretty cool wireless stuff.
http://motorola.canopywireless.com/

My father lives in Southern Pines, NC, and a small business has started up there providing wireless broadband access, becuase there are no other options for high speed internet available. They deploy some products made by Motorola called the Canopy in order to achieve it. Unfortunatly, you have to purchase some proprietary hardware, and the geography of your location really affects the signal. He gets good signal where the box is located now, but some people at the bottom of valleys and hills can barely get signal. It's some kind of line of sight thing, but since they are on cell phone towers it has good coverage.

Speedwise, it's pretty decent from when I've been there to use it. They've had some issues with reliability when they get some big storms (that's prime hurricane aftermath territory), but I wouldn't be suprised.

Just wanted to post to let those who were thinking about the WiMax solution for rural areas, becuase here is a solution already being used.

Since your actually funded and can, therefore, do better than fabricated pringle-can antenna's and 802.11, I recommend this. Grown-up wireless that works very well. 802.11 is an adaptation of Ethernet to microwave that does not scale. Canopy was created to do what you want to do.

Alot of WISPs and neighborhood networks are using Motorola Canopy. They have 2.4ghz and 5.7ghz systems. These are NOT 802.11a/b/g. I suggest giving this system some serious consideration.

Rob, I too live just outside Ann Arbor in Saline. In my area there is no DSL or cable either.

A guy in my neighborhood has a T1 to his house and sells service off it for $35/month, using Motorola's Canopy. he can get up to a 10 mile radius, so it's possible that you're within range.

As a result, you get 1.5Mbps (shared) upstream AND downstream, which is better than most cable service. It's been very reliable, and cheaper than cable too.

Anyone who's interested, drop me a note and I can give you the info.

Hey macdaddy, we are also the telco for our area and right now we run AFC/Copper Mountain equipment for the DSLAMs. I agree, they are pricey, but Copper Mountain is mad cheap compared to AFC. We are also a cooperative company, so we will probably just supply the subscriber units free of charge to our customers instead of making them pay a huge fee up front. We thought about doing 802.11b/g for the hotspot idea (which we probably will do), but we are looking at a fixed-wireless system that will do several miles for the rest of the coverage. The hotspot will probably be supplied by ADCs Loopstar system, which you should definately check out. Right now Motorola's Canopy has our attention because of the way they package their service. You do not need to pay for service contracts, their startup costs are not too high, the antennas they use are TINY compared to other products that I have looked at thus far, the range/bandwidth is pretty decent (which will be doubled in the spring) for what we need and the dealers we have been speaking with have awesome customer service. So far they are definately in the lead. Other companies I have been comparing are WaveRider, Airspan and a few others. I am going through the comments on this forum because I have heard some recommendations for companies that I have not heard of before. I will post an update when we get closer to our decision but right now its all about Motorola.

Australia and New Zealand both have overpriced internet access however its not due to small pipes out to the the major exchanges, its due to greed of the local phone compaines.

The pipes are the 1st excuse. Boy is it a lame one too. It turns out that AT&T recently decided it was too expensive to maintain repeaters every 20km and repalced them with ones that have a greater distance and now they have something like a 1000x the bandwidth they had before. Soutern Cross just upgraded its repeaters and now has more bandwidth than the can sell plus most of the speculators are tring to offlaod their unused bandwith as well. Plus Tyco may be running a new fiber which will keep the stock holders happy about keeping orders up for undersea fiber and the laying ships busy even though the bandwidth side of the businesse may not be looking so hot. Why have 3 bad divisions when you can have one?

The second excuse is that Australia is a big place and Telstra has to provide coverage everywhere. Thats kind of ture but there are parts of Australia the size of many US states that has zero population and no one asking for a phone. Throw in the fact that two cities have a larger population than Chicago now. With the other cities 96% of the population lives within 25,000 meters (or yards) of an exchange (but not by ADSL distance) or cell tower. Telstra does have to spend a bit on rural areas but its no different than the western part of the US midwest and they don't have to worry about ice.

The only real excuse is Telstra is a luxury tax which helps the goverment and what a lovely tax it is. Outside of the 3rd world, Telstra is the most expensive phone company in the world for people who use the phone.

The interconnect fees are out of line. Its cheaper for me to call the US or UK on some cell phones than it is to call the other side of town. with Orange, its cost twice as much to call a land line in Australia than it does to call a landline in the US. Phone rates in New Zeland are equally out of line. With some plans its the same price if you call a phone in NZ, Aus, US or the UK.

Right now I've got a few Canopy access points. I also have access to a roof on one of the tallest building in town and 10mb ISP uplink. I've got racks of isp gear and everything I need to sell ISP service execpt for one small thing, a Telecomunications License. Thats $10,000 up front and more every year. You also have to be the right kind of company to get the license but the license lets you do things like run wire in the ground and resell inetnet access.

So if anyone near Melbourne wants to buy an unlimited 2mb pipe, I can set you up. The gear is only about $1500 and it takes about 2 hrs to set up so the setup fee would be about $11,800 :-)

I also have an AP on a very tall hill just outside of the outer burbs and I can't sell bandwidth from there either.

And for those that say Telstra won't sell unlimited business broadband, they will but only in New Zealand and a 1.5mb adsl link is NZ$500/mo +gst. The same thing in Australia would cost you something like $38,556 in over use charges if you could keep the pipe full for a full month.

People in both countries need to pull their heads out and figure out they need a Public Utilities Commission but everyone seems to be so happy with the TIO and ACCC and the other groups that aren't looking out for anyone.

Excuse me while I hop on over to the Information Super Outback! Thanks Telstra!

Right now Motorola Canopy is about $1100 per 60 degrees on an access point and the subscriber units are about $515. With the built in antenna you get about two miles but with a typical sat tv type dish, you can get upto 35 miles in some configurations. Its not 802.16 but it works and it works today.