[olliej]

They’re often placed on the sides of hills so presumably that’s a problem. UHF/VHF (I can never recall which sorry) is used for the rural radio links in NZ so can probably handle such issues.

I suspect the real answer though is that satellite theoretically everywhere regardless of geography on the installation site, so you only have to build one type of unit rather than multiple variants. That probably makes life easier (cheaper) for everyone.

Obviously that’s assuming a country doesn’t decide to disrupt entire communication networks in a murder rampage into their neighbouring countries.