> My understanding was that mobile phone signals naturally did not travel very far because of the spectrum they used That's more about not going through trees

> My understanding was that mobile phone signals naturally did not travel very far because of the spectrum they used That's more about not going through trees etc. If you have a line of sight to a cell tower, what keeps you from connecting is mostly the radio trying to be polite and choosing not to talk to a cell tower that's more than some max time delay away. I assume for this they'll tweak the settings, and satellites are good for line of sight.