Repeater public use and networking

I have read and watched many videos concerning range and mesh uses, but nothing has really answered the question of using multiple repeaters owned by different users.
Case: I want to connect with my friend who is 150 miles away, and I have a repeater on top of my house. If my repeater is in range of someone else’s repeater, who is then in range of someone else’s repeater, can I communicate over distance this way?
There was mention of them needing to be all on a same network?
Essentially, if all Meshtastic users were to set up repeaters within range of each other, could anyone reach any device with unlimited rnage?

Yes, they have to use the same LoRa settings, for example the default preset LongFast. Then a repeater will indeed rebroadcast the message, but the same message will only be rebroadcasted 3 times by default. The maximum you can set this hop limit to is 7, but only use that if you really need to, because it really increases airtime.