Yes, cell/radio towers operate on Line of Sight. In flat, no vegetation lands you can see for data towers maybe 5 to 10 miles of range radius from the tower. In more realistic conditions you see 2 to 4 miles at best range. You’d be surprised how many cellular towers there are everywhere hiding in plain sight, since the high frequency bands such as 1900mhz don’t have penetration like 600mhz bands do. Lower frequency tends to not be as fast as higher frequency bands so its usually a tradeoff for speed or range. Before I was running Starlink I used to run 4G internet, and because where I live is rural, hilly, and full of trees, I had no direct line of sight. 1000 dollars in special parabolic radio antennas were required to focus on signal reflections to get data signal and even then I only had 3 bars roughly of signal. The tower is about 3.5mi away as the crow flies.
There are plenty of Systemdless forks of distros. People do maintain and it works well. However, the issue is to make the forks its incredibly labor intensive for coders and while not impossible to remove systemd, it’s extremely hard. When base apps require systemd, it locks you down to that one system which is why people hate it so much. It centralizes code and the systems and prevents ease of choice. Does it work? Yes. Though even if it doesn’t affect you or your thoughts, its good to understand why there is a divide. I personally use Artix Linux at the moment with S6 as my init system and it works great. I get why people like Systemd, but I feel it sterilizes our freedom of choice like a frog in a pot of water.