There's at least two people on HN that operate community wired networks. I have my notes on the wrong computer, but you could probably find them with search. The economics sound not great.
Fixed wireless may have nicer economics with the right geography. My parents use it on a farm. I doubt you're going to be able to stream HD netflix/amazon over it through.
Since the Santa Rosa fires, I have been trying to figure out some combination of community broadband and/or mesh network that would provide service during and after emergencies.
Our fire chief lives in Santa Rosa (and lost his house) and his description of the incredible chaos caused by a lack of communications was heartbreaking. i.e. People were evacuated to hospitals that were in the process of being evacuated.
I wish there was a way to run a mesh network on a USB stick Pi Zero sort of thing. Just spread them around town and have a wifi network for when shit gets bad.
When I traveled to Estonia and Lithuania a couple years ago, they effectively had this. Most businesses had wifi and freely gave out the passwords. After awhile I had enough passwords stored on my phone that I had internet everywhere I went within the city even though I didn't have a mobile plan.
Seoul in Korea is much like this - when my partner and I took a surprise trip there, we were worried about getting around and purchasing a SIM as neither of us spoke Korean, but there was rarely a place where there wasn't some sort of wifi access from the major telecom providers with both a paid and free version. You couldn't necessarily do things like youtube or Facebook over the public access, but things like maps, email, and messaging were all very doable.
Anyone tried to do so?