"An interesting link about altitude and mobile networks:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&...
These guys reportedly sent an Android phone up to 17.5 kM (57k ft) and have it sent back the location each 90 seconds."

"Hi John, very interesting project. I signed up just to comment XD. Using the mobile network is definitely the way to go in order to perform long range missions. Here are my two cents as Android programmer:

The phone doesn't need to be the "server"…"