Phillip -

Thanks for the advice. I called our local AREAS coordinator, and he was very nice, and had a lot of information (and questions) for me. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that my concept for a medium-band backhaul to the Internet quickly ran aground - not on the technology issues, which seemed to be surmountable, but by my request that I could put a computer with, say, Skype and a mail client HERE and have the data connection go over the air to some THERE where the wires were still up.

Well, there seems to be some issue with if the person sending instant messages via Skype is a licensed ham operator, and the role of the control operator vs. the user and it all got complicated very quickly. Not to mention there seemed to be all to much complexity. We don't have the kind of setups that Charlie mentioned.

So I contacted some other folks and found out about long-range non-line of sight ethernet links as used for industrial communications. I found this gem of a device for under $1,000

http://www.industrialethernet.com/aw900x.html

Now, I am located up high at my command center, and with a 20 mile Line of sight range to a lot of possible end points and at 1.5 MB/sec, it's looking like an ideal solution - best of all, it need no license, and from the looks of it, it's a simple enough setup.

I think we can get a grant for this equipment, if we make it some kind of a shared resource. Looking into it.