Specifically mention of two Ubiquiti M900 (~$130 each) for line-of-sight internet from home.
Related discussions:
They are(were) deploying wifi mesh networks on the cheap in Slovenia. They've covered entire towns that did not have internet access in the past (mesh network in the town + string of directed antenna to get an uplink from a bigger town). Routers they used cost in the range of 15€ each, but the last time I talked to them they had trouble supplying new routers.
The alternative would be a small battery-powered 4G hotspot like the Huawei E5573CS-322.
I would rather avoid a 4G hotspot attached to my wheelchair for a couple of reasons, chief among them is the data costs would be really high. If I were to extend my home Wi-Fi network I've already paid for my Internet connection, I'm just making my home Wi-Fi network WAY BIGGER than it was intended to be. :-)
Espressif also have a shorter distance but lower power option that uses WiFi tech called ESP-Now that is worth looking at: http://espressif.com/en/products/software/esp-now/overview
It's only a matter of time before it's easier and cheaper to get any kind of networked devices onto a carrier network than the users wifi. The implications are kinda scary though: does this mean it's only a matter of time before the majority of personal devices talk to their users with a telco/govement middle man network?
Reliability is going to be the hard part.
so 15 pounds in CAD is ~ $25
so 15 pounds for 500mb/month in Canada...
Gonna be hard to beat that, cost-wise, with anything reliable and covering a large area.
The reason being is that I have lots of Internet connected devices which watch over me whilst I'm in the house, being Quadriplegic it's much more comforting to have a computer watch over my health and do things for me than it is to have a potentially tired, angry and/or bored person doing it. However, that bubble ends as soon as I pass out of Wi-Fi range.
So obviously I would like to extend coverage to cover my smalltown, but everything I've seen so far has been prohibitively expensive. It wouldn't need to have a massive amount of bandwidth available as it would be just me using it, but it would need to be fairly cheap and as near to 100% reliable as possible.
Any insights, questions, comments? TIA
Edited To Add: I've just measured it using Google Earth and I need to cover a circle with an area of about one square kilometre.