As long as they cost less than putting up cell phone towers in the middle of nowhere, its all good. Idk but I don't imagine cell phone towers cover a 40km radius. Telco's have no great incentive to do this so kudos to Google.
And as Larry Page said, stop already with the obvious negativity. Bad actors can bring down cell phone towers too. And who cares about precedents.
There's reason why they extended it (Enhanced Extended Range). It was only technical limit due TDMA timing advance. It had nothing to do with the actual signal reception strength / transmission power required. So in 800 MHz range 120 kilometers should be well achievable with 2 W transmitter.
"GSM has a fixed maximum cell site range of 120 km, which is imposed by technical limitations. This is expanded from the old limit of 35 km."
And as Larry Page said, stop already with the obvious negativity. Bad actors can bring down cell phone towers too. And who cares about precedents.