[cornflake23]

Tried it, alas, without success -Two big factors: 1. the infrastructure that made this possible in the 90s isn’t there anymore (at least in my part of the world). 2. The surrounding world requires information exchange at physical boundaries. These too have now been “digitized”.

Where might we turn to?

[amatecha]

The family could all get their amateur radio certification/license and communicate over great distances, for free, without any subscription fees, tracking, etc. :) Sounds like I'm joking but honestly with the presence of repeaters everywhere around any metropolitan area, establishing communication would be trivially easy (especially with agreed-upon "time windows" during which to listen for each other and/or to check in).