I have hand held that can reach about a mile. Too many hills where I live. Works ok. With the new testing of Starlink T-Mobile satellite cell phones coming up, that might be a good thing. SpaceX is putting up 42,000 satellites for Starlink internet access and they now have teamed with T-Mobile to test cell phones directly using the satellites without needing cell towers. SpaceX now has aroung 6,000 satellites in orbit to do this. They launched 96 or 97 rockets last year, and plan to launch 144 this year. Of course they have reusable rockets to do this with. They have broke a bunch of launch and rocket landing records. My SIL has Starlink and loves it. He said it was much faster with TV and the internet than traditional satellites. Small pizza box size antenna.
I say this to say, with a cell phone, you can charge it with a small portable carry size solar cell charger. Other than an EMP, you can always have connection. The reason for so many satellites is to have complete global coverage, and if one gets knocked out, another will come along in orbit to take it's place. This is one of the reasons SpaceX is currently trying to test the biggest rocket ever made. It can launch over 200 of these satellites at a time. Their current rocket, the Falcon 9, can only launch 20-50 satellites at a time. Early Starlinks satellites were smaller thus about 50 at a time. The new ones are larger with laser communication and are stronger and thus only about 20 at a time on a Falcon 9 rocket.
Might be worth the wait for a T-Mobile satellite cell phone.
