Let's imagine a closed-system (let's say "City under a dome" controlled by benevolent corporate overlords) where there's no Internet because it's not allowed. The infrastructure exists, there are satellites out there, but they're tightly controlled so that no Internet is able to form inside said dome. Now let's allow for there to be a population that lives outside the dome with limited access to resources. They can't control the satellites or make use of existing infrastructure (except perhaps by bootlegging or hacking their way in). What infrastructure would be necessary for them to have rudimentary devices like cell phones that allow strictly for texting between members of the same network?

EDIT: To be clear, I understand that satellites are not used in cellphone communications and that the Internet is unrelated to communications of this kind; I just needed to specifically rule it out as an option in coming up with some way to communicate between devices. So if repurposing existing towers that may have once be used for cell phone communications is sufficient, that's helpful to know; in what I'm writing, the people who live in this area outside the "dome" (it's not a dome, just using this verbiage for illustrative purposes) use messenger devices like pagers to text to each other, so I just wanted some speculation on what technology they might be using. My question is not ridiculous, so please be civil in your speculations.

Let's imagine a closed-system (let's say "City under a dome" controlled by benevolent corporate overlords) where there's no Internet because it's not allowed. The infrastructure exists, there are satellites out there, but they're tightly controlled so that no Internet is able to form inside said dome. Now let's allow for there to be a population that lives outside the dome with limited access to resources. They can't control the satellites or make use of existing infrastructure (except perhaps by bootlegging or hacking their way in). What infrastructure would be necessary for them to have rudimentary devices like cell phones that allow strictly for texting between members of the same network?

EDIT: To be clear, I understand that satellites are not used in cellphone communications and that the Internet is unrelated to communications of this kind; I just needed to specifically rule it out as an option in coming up with some way to communicate between devices. So if repurposing existing towers that may have once be used for cell phone communications is sufficient, that's helpful to know; in what I'm writing, the people who live in this area outside the "dome" (it's not a dome, just using this verbiage for illustrative purposes) use messenger devices like pagers to text to each other, so I just wanted some speculation on what technology they might be using. My question is not ridiculous, so please be civil in your speculations. For example, a couple suggestions were ham radios or pagers, using bluetooth, or optics/lasers. These are the kind of answers I was looking for.

Let's imagine a closed-system (let's say "City under a dome" controlled by benevolent corporate overlords) where there's no Internet because it's not allowed. The infrastructure exists, there are satellites out there, but they're tightly controlled so that no Internet is able to form inside said dome. Now let's allow for there to be a population that lives outside the dome with limited access to resources. They can't control the satellites or make use of existing infrastructure (except perhaps by bootlegging or hacking their way in). What infrastructure would be necessary for them to have rudimentary devices like cell phones that allow strictly for texting between members of the same network?

Let's imagine a closed-system (let's say "City under a dome" controlled by benevolent corporate overlords) where there's no Internet because it's not allowed. The infrastructure exists, there are satellites out there, but they're tightly controlled so that no Internet is able to form inside said dome. Now let's allow for there to be a population that lives outside the dome with limited access to resources. They can't control the satellites or make use of existing infrastructure (except perhaps by bootlegging or hacking their way in). What infrastructure would be necessary for them to have rudimentary devices like cell phones that allow strictly for texting between members of the same network?

EDIT: To be clear, I understand that satellites are not used in cellphone communications and that the Internet is unrelated to communications of this kind; I just needed to specifically rule it out as an option in coming up with some way to communicate between devices. So if repurposing existing towers that may have once be used for cell phone communications is sufficient, that's helpful to know; in what I'm writing, the people who live in this area outside the "dome" (it's not a dome, just using this verbiage for illustrative purposes) use messenger devices like pagers to text to each other, so I just wanted some speculation on what technology they might be using. My question is not ridiculous, so please be civil in your speculations.