@mro @gert I believe Meshtastic (LoRa) is at the current time the best option. The community is already vast, meaning route redundancy and fault tolerance are a built in in many cities.
This is only a part of the node population
https://meshtastic.liamcottle.net/
LilyGo, SenseCAP T1000 and Station G2 (incl Nano G2) are plug and play for the less technically minded, have kilometers of line of sight (records are in the hundreds for Meshtastic) and an excellent app layer.