[abbietmp]

ham radios. I knew a guy who set up a pirate radio station  in the desert. military found it in 12 hours but it was fun while it lasted.

I'm not going to suggest a pirate station, but yeah ham radio. There's the obvious voice communication, but you can run computer network links over radio. You don't depend on infrastructure, so there's no need to pay someone to communicate. Just 100 watts on HF using a length of wire is enough to communicate with just about any point on earth or even in near space using nothing but a radio. Try talking to the folks aboard the international space station without a ham radio.