You might be just describing packet radio, which does exist, but it's extremely slow due to the physical size of the radio waves involved, as I understand it. The frequency of the waves, due to their extremely long wavelength, is very low.
The trade-off for the long wavelengths is better permeability of the signal, which is why the author of the article is able to transmit so far on seven watts, but your Wi-Fi (high frequency and very short wavelength) has trouble getting through walls.
Packet doesn’t have to be in any particular frequency band, e.g. not in ELF-MF (3Hz-3000kHz).
It just implies packet switching instead of circuit switching or message switching, and can be done at any frequency.
APRS is packet; anything that hears a position report can decode the data and decide what to do with it, as a unit. This is versus circuit switching or message switching-circuit switching being a dedicated channel (e.g. a phone call, regardless of what the underlying protocol is, since I know we can do things like VoLTE where the underlying network packetizes and multiplexes traffic) and message switching being like email-routed all together somewhere, perhaps via multiple hops.
The trade-off for the long wavelengths is better permeability of the signal, which is why the author of the article is able to transmit so far on seven watts, but your Wi-Fi (high frequency and very short wavelength) has trouble getting through walls.