I don't have any first hand experience, but I know you can do long range (couple kilometers), reliable (for consumer level) decent speed links for dirt cheap (<150USD for each side with weather proofing etc) based on the WUGs in my home country (ZA).

Detour paragraph - background - Internet has historically been pretty sht in South Africa so a enthusiast spider network of point to point links sprung up much like the ham radio movement. Government decided to OK it as long as its not commercial & doesn't deliver internet services.

Anyway...the WUG websites (JAWUG, PTAWUG, CPTWUG - being Johannesburg/Pretoria/CapeTown) have lots of beginner style info on it (will trees and leaves in block it etc)...plus info on cheap kits...plus there are loads of people there that know this stuff in wild detail (as I said - 100% community driven so even the central high-sites are community run).

I know some people who have successfully used Ubiquiti's airFiber for point-to-point links. I think those run on the order of $5 grand for a complete installation (two radios, mounts, etc) of a faster-than-gigabit link.

We run some between offices across the street from each other. We were lucky as we didn't understand the minimum distance was probably more important than the maximum distance for this type of setup! They have run flawlessly at about 800Mbps for the last year.

for what dollar figure, distance and speeds? anywhere from $300/link (a pair of ubiquiti powerbeam AC 5 GHz) up to $20,000 for 1 to 10GbE licensed.