They knew where the phone was when they bricked it using the "Find my iPhone" feature. Makes you wonder why did not ring the doorbell earlier.

A few years back, I posted my notes on how to build a wifi router using Linux and a SBC (http://siso.sourceforge.net/). It served me well in the past 5 years. I am sure this can be updated with a fresh kernel and 802.11n.

The approach works equally well with WiMax (clear.com). I am 5 miles from a tower, but get plenty of signal using a simple Al foil reflector. Boost was about 6 dBm.