[_carbyau_]

Better coverage may be claimed. But as you know, Australia is a big place.

The few farmers I know have a rough idea of the on-the-ground cell coverage. They say things like "this side of the hill/town" usually. I've seen them deliberately walk to the other side of a silo to make a call.

I assume that the coverage maps are assumed cell-tower-coverage-if-shit-is-not-in-the-way. No surprise radios are common.

[bitwize]

A Diné (Navajo) slang word for "cellphone" is "bił nijoobałí" which means "the thing you spin around with". Coverage on rez is not great you see, and in some places is so marginal that whether you get a usable signal depends not just on position but orientation...

[robot-wrangler]

> Coverage on rez is not great you see

Tangent but this is a pretty interesting topic. I've heard people speculate that local politics deliberately prevents such infrastructure, waiting for some kind of kickbacks to make it worth their while. Others suggest that it happens because federal telecom subsidies aimed at improving rural connectivity don't apply, as a kind of retaliation for tribal sovereignty. Way off-grid, ok, maybe it's simply not worth it to corporate telecom, but whatever the cause coverage even in fairly populated areas around Kayenta/Monument Valley is also quite bad in a way that would be infrequent in comparable communities in say, nowhere Appalachia.

Many a suburban parent of smart-phone addicted children would romanticize the whole thing and actually be kind of jealous of a situation like that. Years back and on the other side of the world, tourists were very scandalized about more roads and towers around Annapurna in Nepal.. but of course the locals usually do not actually like to be cut off from the world.

More telecom is probably good despite the evils, but fuck commercial billboards in particular. Those are still creeping closer to the Grand Canyons and Yosemites, and they suck whether it's for multinationals like McDonalds, or for locally owned gas stations or hotels that put cash into tribal communities. Ban them all like Hawaii, and everyone will be astonished to learn that the world keeps turning..

[rendall]

Cool: https://endangeredlanguages.com/resource/navajo-word-day-cel...