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Is internet over ham radio still a thing?

In this particular case, it could help a lot of people, enabling them to quickly and efficiently update their status with their family via email / twitter / google person finder.

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Most of the amateur radio digital protocols are keyboard to keyboard and don't really have the concept of simultaneous traffic, packets, and routing. AX.25 (also known as packet radio) does however and could possibly be used to transmit traffic like that. It is most frequently used on line-of-sight (VHF, UHF) bands. There are some others like the different PACTOR protocols, but they are essentially proprietary, and PACTOR IV TNCs are not cheap.

There's WinLink (http://www.winlink.org/) which is able to send email, photos, position reports etc over HF. It seems to be pretty healthy.

Check out: http://www.broadband-hamnet.org

The amateur radio service has overlapping frequency allocations with ISM/WiFi.

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