Satilite ? I know Australia launched a few with largely the aim of internet coverage but they do seem to do a pretty good job, better than that microwave link by the sounds
Satellite has too much latency (500ms+) if you're bouncing off geosynchronous birds. A few plans have been floated for LEO systems (750 miles is often mentioned; GS is about 22,000 miles) but none have "gotten off the ground"
yet that I know of. That's a killer when you're trying to do VoIP.
(I am surprised you can’t 100/100 p2p microwave, how many stations does it pass through ?)
That is an interesting question, and unless I'm going to go hiking through some very mountainous backcountry or charter a helicopter, I won't know for certain. I know that in addition to the station that the local service terminates on, the next station is on top of a mountain around 10 miles away. These are tiny, bare-minimum setups (this is a repeater, not the terminal station):
I assume they're using obsolete equipment purchased surplus when larger companies upgraded. For all I know, they're using DS2-over-microwave (6.312Mbit/sec).