Is that really true in practice though? Unless you're in the true middle of nowhere, by the time you get a mile out, there's going to be other people using the spectrum, and at low bandwidth they'll be using it for a long time.

Current stuff like LoRa works because there's not many users and the protocols are optimized, but if everyone was iMessaging we'd probably need more spectrum.

We can already do WiFi for miles with narrow beam antennas, we could make mesh network tech cheap if it was standardized and mass produced.