A coastal municipality is designing a water quality monitoring network. Eight of the 12 monitoring locations have cellular coverage, but 4 locations between the harbour and industrial port have no cellular signal. For the 4 locations without coverage, two options are evaluated: installing a LoRaWAN gateway at the harbour (3 to 5 kilometres from the farthest sensor) or equipping each sensor with a satellite link. The sensors transmit 4 parameters every 15 minutes. Which factors most directly determine the better option?