> So baseline, a modern cell phone can connect to a tower about 45 miles away.
Isn't that primarily because of the Earth's curvature and obstructions/hills?
Isn't that primarily because of the Earth's curvature and obstructions/hills?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation#Radi...
There could also be timing related constraints that limit max range: radio waves propagate at the speed of light which is fast, but not instant.
The issue you have with long distances is multipath, which can throw off the complex timing required to have multiple users in realtime on a single radio.
I can't find a direct reference to it on wikipedia, but I suspect this is what the Vortex satellites were doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_(satellite)