We told people that might have to talk with us to send an email. We would call when we read the message. They understood that we did not have regular contacts and would only check in when we had WiFi. Perhaps we are lucky with understanding family, but this saved me from having a phone ring for trivial things or other nonsense. The Skype also made it possible for my wife to talk to her 90 year old mother often enough to keep things quiet on the home front.

We found enough free WiFi and by using a smartphone in the WiFi only mode things worked well. For weather a shortwave/SSB receiver was fine. Of course when we had WiFi we would also get forecasts on our smartphone over the web.