Frequency sets a wave’s size, how fast it fades with distance, whether it bends around the Earth or bounces off the sky, and whether the air itself swallows it. Those four facts explain most of the Table.
One wave is about 0.76 × a sheet of letter paper. Antennas work best when they are a sizable fraction of a wavelength. Small enough to fold inside a phone; most phones carry several antennas for different bands.
Power spreads over an ever larger sphere, so every tenfold increase in distance costs 20 dB. At this frequency the loss is 23 dB more than FM radio’s over the same path. That frequency term comes from the antennas, not the space between them: an antenna with the same pattern is smaller at higher frequencies and catches less. A dish of fixed size wins it back by focusing.
Above about 30 MHz waves pass through the ionosphere, so they reach satellites and stars but not over the horizon. Range on Earth is set by antenna height and obstacles. From a 30 m mast to a receiver 2 m up, the radio horizon is about 28 km.
Clear air barely absorbs frequencies below about 10 GHz; walls, terrain and distance matter far more. The shaded columns are the windows between absorption lines. Curve shape after ITU-R P.676 (sea level, 7.5 g/m³ water vapour), approximate.