Off-grid, still online

Most people who depend on it carry both, because they fail in different places. Satellite works where there is no tower at all, which is most of the good camping, but it needs a clear view of the sky and draws real power. Cellular is cheap, low-draw, and instant, and it is useless the moment you are behind a ridge. The redundancy is the strategy, not indecision.

Enough to matter. A consumer dish runs roughly 40 to 60 watts continuously while it is on, so an eight-hour working day is somewhere around 400 watt-hours, which is a solar panel and change on its own. That is a large slice of a modest off-grid system, and it is why connectivity has to go into your power budget rather than be treated as an afterthought.

They are models, not measurements. Carrier maps are generated by predicting propagation across terrain, and terrain is exactly what breaks them. A map showing solid coverage across a valley can be completely wrong 200 feet down a canyon. Treat them as a rough guide, check crowdsourced data where you can, and never plan a Monday meeting from a spot you have not personally tested.

They amplify a weak signal. They cannot create one. If you have one bar, a good booster can turn that into something usable, and that is a real and useful thing. If you have zero bars and no tower in range, a booster does nothing at all, no matter what it cost. Most disappointment with boosters comes from expecting the second thing.

The answer is regional and it changes, which is why we are not going to declare a winner here. Coverage on public land depends entirely on which carrier built towers in that particular part of that particular state. The people who never lose signal are usually running two carriers on two plans, chosen because they have different coverage holes, not because either is best overall.