So, I grew up in South Africa, and one of the more fascinating / cooler things I saw was a modem which would get you ~50bps (bps, not Kbps) over a single strand of barbed wire -- you'd hammer a largish nail into the ground, and clip one alligator[0] clip onto that, and another alligator clip onto the barbed wire. Repeat the process on the other side (up to ~5km away), plug the modems in, and bits would flow... I only saw these used a few times, but always thought they were cool….
Do you remember anything about the actual type of modem? Or where you deployed them? In the days before the Internet came to SA, I ran a dial-up email link between the US and Pretoria, polled by various people locally (including CSIR, SAIMR). I also carried mail for the UNHCR in Northern Mozambique. Mail came via Karl Deninger (DDSW1) in Chicago, IIRC. They were missing several kilometres of phone wire, so connected the link to the fence on each side of the road. We get about 1200bps on a good day IIRC, and would loose carrier whenever someone moved cattle from one field to another and opened a gate in the fence. paul