One has to wonder if the NY Time's site Wirecutter thinks that home automation only happens in the cloud:
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If you spend anytime lurking in Reddit's r/smarthome or r/homeautomation, you'll quickly realize that most folks have no clue whatsoever that non-cloud / non-wifi smart stuff exists.
Also, you'll never want to move into a new house after seeing some of the wiring-related buffoonery (both HVAC and resi AC) that regularly gets posted. It makes your skin crawl.
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I can see why they left it out - the article is clearly designed (hopefully intentionally and not due to general ignorance of the varities of HA available) for the general non-tech noob audience, and trying to cover cloud/no-cloud, related issues and difference would make the article too hard to digest for them. I imagine my brother reading this article and feeling like it's already too complicated for him to deal with. 
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Although I am a great believer in making my home automation local instead of the cloud, I nevertheless recognize that I can't do everything locally.
A key ingredient of every smart home that I've put together is "notification". More and more smart home owners are now travelling again, and they want to know if there is anything going on in their home.
That "notification" (email/SMS/smartphone notification) is always internet based.
It's not critical to the operation of the Smart Home, but it is critical and very important.
However, as soon as somebody figures out how to do that function without the internet, I will be all over it.
I can't see how the internet can possibly be eliminated in this example. Maybe owls or homing pigeons? Something has to go through the air. 
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Smoke signals. Native Americans had it generations ago, the Chinese used them in ancient times. All we need is a pile of tinder in your living room and a gas flame above it attached to a smart switch... 
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Ask, and ye shall receive ....
and here's the proof of principle ....
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But it doesn't have to depend (much) on systems outside of your control. An ISP and the Internet itself is really all. If you don't want to run your own email service, you can get your "own" as part of a hosting service (web/email/DNS, etc.) for not much $, and it's still under your control (and no lock-in, because you can always move to a different provider).
ping times in days????
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I have zero automations dependent on the internet now. The last was my weather station data. I may integrate with Ecobee for presentation of the Thermostat data but I don't run it from the Hubitat or any of the data collected from it is for info presented on the dashboard and if it went away everything will still run. The only item that may be considered internet is Time services. I sync my time server with the clocks on the internet because my GPS radio went bad and hubitat gets it time my from time server.
No. About 1-2 hours (300000-650000 milliseconds).
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No that's the only option that is readily accessible.
I am currently in the planning stage of a 4g cellular network SMS based notification system, that would directly communicate HA messages.
Essentially if my hardwired cable isp goes offline the 4g backup would sms me whatever I designate as important. Very similar to what cellular alarm system do.
This would not be a 4g wan backup system.
Only if there's not a statue that needs pooped on! 
I like these quotes from a report on the PIP (pigeon IP)
Known risks to the protocol include:
- Carriers being attacked by birds of prey. RFC2549: "Unintentional encapsulation in hawks has been known to occur, with decapsulation being messy and the packets mangled."
Example of packet loss.
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Another gem...whoever wrote this must have been a PM at my former company...this is exactly how we managed our projects!!
Specification of Requirements
In this document, several words are used to signify the requirements
of the specification. These words are often capitalized.MUST -- Usually.
MUST NOT -- Usually not.
SHOULD -- Only when Marketing insists.
MAY -- Only if it doesn't cost extra.
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Near the end of the last century we had automated notification systems using low speed modems and phone lines...
Don't forget about fax machines (that are somehow still used.)
In the 90s i had modems sending text messages to pagers.
