THANK YOU. This was bugging the crap out of me. I live in the country now so it's doubtful if I setup the hardware it would even be of utility, but I was just curious what became of it. There's another comment that goes into all the different varieties.

Glad to see the NYC mesh. For a while I lived in an area that was basically that but paid. It was small "city", and someone bought rights to tap into a giant line that happened to go through the city. They set up radio broadcasters, and to get service you'd use one of their radio modems. It wasn't free, but very community based. You'd see the business owners out and about. You'd see "Bob" at the bar, then might see him climbing your neighbors buildings roof to put up a repeater. Prices and speeds were great but mostly service was awesome. It was "your friendly neighborhood ISP". I got the impression the business was doing well but probably wouldn't like, list on the stock market or anything. It was just really cool to see an ISP have the character of say, a solid restaurant that everyone in town knows.