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> The tower-devices will be broadcasting their presence and location

To a certain extent, yes. You could use highly directional 802.11 antennas (yagi or shotgun) and disguise them. If they have minimal side lobe bleed, they may be indistinguishable from the normal AP background levels. You should be able to get 1-5 miles out of such a link. A few dozen such links could criss-cross a city such as Cairo.

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With a coastal city like Tunis, there's the possibility of setting up comms with ships at anchor carrying hefty satellite equipment. Old fashioned satellite dishes could extend the range of such links to many dozens of miles.

I wonder about combining this idea with my idea of a balloon drone with equipment for aiming an antenna/laser link?

There was also a wireless networking technology developed at HP using the old Ethernet protocols, but instead of a wire, a patch of ceiling illuminated by infrared LED carried the signal instead. A network using such a technology and the side of a skyscraper could easily cover a large swath of a city and would be hard to detect.

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