Or on Inmarsat BGAN, where data costs $6/MB (yes, six dollars per megabyte).

The design considerations for systems used on a $6/MB network, where you don't want to transmit anything unless you really have to, will be different from the ones on a patchy cellular network, where you want to keep sending packets to see if you're online yet. It's impossible to make an app that works well on both types of networks without knowing which one it's on - unless it's a fully offline app.