> Hello villagers from Mihe Town,
> Communication has been cut off by the heavy rain. The emergency management department deployed a Wing Loong UAV above you in response of your emergency need, and it can restore mobile network for China Mobile. Due to limitation on the UAV's flight time, this mobile network can only last for 5 hours. Please report your status to your relatives as soon as possible. Wish you safe!
An UAV's advantage is that it can fly on its own and fly a long distance (Wing Loong's flight time is said to be 30 hours). Given enough drones they can deploy a continuous mobile network across a large area.
One good alternative I can think of is deploying small self-contained mesh networking devices, something like Project Owl, directly from air. These devices can form an emergency network for communicating urgent needs.
They're tethered.