>>454252Cellular repeaters are available for about $600 said-and-done (Antenna(s), amplifier, connectors/cable, odds-n-ends).
Tried out one this weekend and was rather surprised at its performance. Minimal signal without, and a damn good signal with.
Do need some space between the two antennas though.
Wouldn't worry too much about mountains... bounce it off something distant or hunt around for a signal. Might take you 10-15 minutes to get everything set up to a reliable connection. Don't necessarily need direct line-of-sight with radio.
All of them I've used are rather power-hungry - you're going to need a pretty hefty power supply to run it. The Wilson 12v amps will kill a car battery in a few hours if the engine's not running. Smaller cars may not have alternator idle output to run it and keep the battery charged. Something to consider.
>Pic extremely related.Satellite's expensive but doable. It's been about 10 years since I've used any of that equipment, but I wanna say it was about $300/week for the equipment rental and data fees. Also significantly larger than you'd want to hike around with (basketball-sized mag-mount dome on the cab, cable into the controller/modem in the truck, then ethernet to the computer). Took about 10mins to warm up, find itself, find satellites, and actually make the connection. And again, power-hungry. Signal would drop and it took about 5-10 minutes to find another satellite if it was tracking a satellite that went below the horizon.
Iridium has a few data-enabled satellite phones that may work, but I can't believe they've got enough bit energy from a handheld device to make an internet connection for anything more than email.
