So what is so ground breaking around this WiFi connection? We have done WiFi links that spans 20+ km for years using off the shelf ubiquiti and mikrotik equipment. Are they saying they can do the 9.9 miles without directional antennas, just blasting the signal using a unidirectional antenna?
Yep. HaLow is omnidirectional and tolerates barriers in line of sight (walls, trees, etc).
It runs on the 900MHz band which is the same band that walkie talkies and LoRaWAN use but the real breakthrough is the higher data rates achieved while maintaining these longer distances.
That's pretty much exactly what they're saying in the video.
They show their off-the-shelf dev kit which features a generic omni-directional rubber-duck antenna with quoted 1dB of gain (essentially nothing) and 21dBm of transmit power.
