I haven't bothered trawling back through this old thread to see what's already been said so forgive me if this is repetition.
But there have been changes in roaming phone and datra services recently, with more to come.
We use a smartphone on the Three network, which gives us unlimited data and our full ration of included calls in most of Europe and this has worked well for us. France. Spain, Austria and Italy are definitely covered; not sure about Germany yet. You can't tether the smartphone to use your laptop on this service but you get good speeds on the smartphone and I find it adequate for domestic purposes. If I really need to use the laptop I seek out a McDonalds, where there is always free wifi on the Continent.
Prior to the availablility of these "free" services I used an SFR dongle thingy in France and that cost 30€ per month to a max of 1 or 2Gb (can't remember which) which wasn't bad - and I could use my laptop with that.
Not sure about building websites that way but if you do the work off line and then upload only occassionally it might be adequate. I doubt if satellite phone technology is likely to be affordable.
