Comment by steve_adams_86

Yes, I use my phone over satellite regularly now. It's still amazing to me that it's possible. Phones are a great tool here because everyone truly does have them, they're portable, and they have large rechargeable batteries that can charge from countless sources over USB. So, it does seem like we could use them to great effect to create networks when other systems go down. I'm not sure they can handle long range comms due to requiring antennas, but close-range in cities might work well. I'm not sure what routing on that mesh would look like, or how busy it would get and how well phones could handle that.

Satellites could be an important component here, but there's always the need for redundancy. They can be compromised too, and you don't own them.

The LTU Extreme Range hardware is way, way more expensive than a LoRa radio, and it still uses quite a bit of power (relatively). It still seems far from ideal in situations where you can't depend on power utilities. Great point though, I wasn't aware that exists. It appears you need the one you linked as well as the Rocket as its base station, which puts it close to $800 CAD after taxes.