There's networks like Helium that are based around LoraWAN mesh IoT minders. Assuming there's some financial advantage to having maximal connectivity to other miners, putting a few on the mountains above a major metro area seems like a very straightforward idea.

It's not above a major metro area though, it's above Salt Lake City.

The Salt Lake City Metropolitan Statistical Area is #24 as ranked by population, so it depends what one would consider "major".

To me, top 25 seems major, but to someone else top 20 would be major. I don't think "major" in the context of metro areas is an official term.

I’ve heard major metro area as roughly being top 100 cities in the world which Salt Lake City is nowhere close to.

If anything Salt Lake seems about average size for a city.

Yeah, let's just derail into a subthread bickering about what threshold counts as a major metro area, vs meaningfully engaging with the actual topic at hand.

This place is cursed with the worst pointless nerd sniping behavior.

Talking about metro size is actually relevant because if it was a major metro area like say LA they could actually use the cellphone network that would blanket the area. Instead it’s a modest city in basically the middle of nowhere thus the problem.

Complaining, on the other hand is a complete waste of everyone’s time.

This conversation is indeed a distraction, but for posterity and those curious the population for the SLC area is slightly confusing because of the population proportion of the central city itself with the legal name "Salt Lake City" is small relative to all the adjoining municipalities that basically blend together into one city (even including street addresses, grid system, public transit), and the way the metro areas for Provo, SLC, and Ogden are reported in the census separately even though people commute between them in the same way people travel between SF and San Jose.

The numbers are more like: 1) Salt Lake City: 200K people 2) Salt Lake City Metro Area (MSA): 1.25-1.3 million 3) Salt Lake-Ogden-Provo Combined Statistical Area (CSA): ~2.7 Million. FYI this region is also called the "Wasatch Front"

To understand these levels of breakdown the equivalent for Bay Area naming would be: 1) San Francisco itself (the 49 square miles): ~800K people 2) San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley MSA: ~4.6 million 3) San Jose-SF-Oakland CSA (think the whole "Bay Area"): ~9.5 Million

It's the Combined Statistical Area of SLC (the "Wasatch Front") which is now ~22nd-24th in the nation, not the MSA itself.

It's similar in size to Charlotte or Sacramento, and larger than the respective CSAs of eg Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Kansas City, Nashville, or Las Vegas

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area)

That’s true enough, but missing the major difference. Salt Lake City’s metropolitan area is effectively in the middle of nowhere surrounded by desert not rings of exurbs that blend into new cities the way you normally see around major cities.

Which is why it isn’t surrounded by a great cellphone network, and thus why they are setting up a independent radio network.

The I-80 and I-15 both intersect in SLC and are major routes. Cell coverage is just fine until it gets a little sketchy up by Idaho but still (close enough to) 100%.

Good enough where you wouldn’t need to set up your own system. Or be stupid enough to make them noticeable and have the Forest Service confiscate them. I mean, come on, a little black paint and a cryptic “Property of US Government” sticker would go a long way.

Or, if you want to be super sneaky just throw them up on a telephone pole because it’s well known that the companies only mess with their own equipment so you can hide stuff in plain sight.

That’s not really useful if you want to make use of the other 90+% of land in the area such as by having people fly over it in paragliders and possibly make an emergency landings.

Sure, but the argument was cartels building a shadow cell network because the existing one was too iffy for them.

And these seem to be right outside SLC proper.

That was one idea tossed out, but there isn’t a cellphone network coverage in most areas covered by this network.

Suggesting it’s useful in places that overlapped ignores the utility in areas where it would be the only option. I doubt drug dealers are meeting up in the desert outside of cellphone range with their suppliers, but it isn’t a crazy idea.

Having lived there 2016-2022, it certainly does not feel anything like a major metro to me.

1.2 million people. And probably geographically the closest metro area to the people who did this; I assume whoever did it lives in or around Utah.