“ Preppers practicing for comms post shtf times.”
That’s my guess. GMRS repeaters maybe or a meshed LTE network of some kind.
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Whoever is putting them up either has an FCC license and permission from the landowner (unless maybe they’are all on public land?) Each node looks to have a value of several hundred to several thousand dollars and that means there’s nearly zero chance a bunch of hams or other hobbyists are putting that kind of coin out of their own pockets knowing there’s a high probability they’ll be confiscated.
Pirate radio operators build $50 transmitters (aka the “grenade”) that they can afford to walk away from if someone finds it.
That's my best guess. We have them here. A bunch of us hams w/GMRS licenses also are doing it out my way. Yes, for off grid comms.
That looked like a GMRS antenna in the video clip. I recognize it as being the same/very similar to one that the guys out my way use.
It's not hard to get a cheap solar panel, a cheap GMRS antenna, a few Baofeng's linked together as a repeater setup and a battery pack all wired together to make a cheap GMRS repeater. I'd bet that's what was in the box.
There are also kits readily available sans solar panel that are about $250 to buy and deploy. For those of us in a ham club it's actually a pretty cheap hobby to fund some cheap linked repeaters together. I help fund six of them on a monthly basis.