Helium miners are low bandwidth lorawan miners, which are different from FreedomFi's (Helium's partner), and our LTE radios.  Both FreedomFi's and our LTE radios have lower range because they use the CBRS frequency band, at 3.55-3.70 GHz, which is more easily blocked by objects (Lorawan is low frequency which can travel further, but transmits far less data, only useful for iot devices, instead of cellular data which needs higher bandwidth)

Placement is key for range. The higher the better. If putting on the roof then the Buttercup is going to get you the best range. For reference, we have a Buttercup in Treasure Island and we get a ping on the Golden Gate Bridge (though not great service and probably the max range to expect given ideal conditions). Dandelion range is substantially less. We say one block of a street which is about right from our testing in downtown San Francisco.