alt Hacker NewsI'm surprised that phone manufacturers haven't already implemented a mesh network. I guess you could kind of call Apple's Find My network one, but if you want to smuggle arbitary data the bandwidth is very low. Maybe Apple's new mobile Wi-Fi chip is a precursor to an actual Internet mesh network.
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Not a single telco wants this. So it does not get built.
Interestingly DECT NR+ is a 5G standard on dedicated spectrum and has been designed to be a mesh from the start.
I don't think they themselves need to implement it. During the Hong Kong protests in 2019 they used apps like Bridgefy.
Blackberry had one, but it didn't seem to be a feature consumers particularly cared about when they fled to iPhones.
Pixel 9 and some apple devices use the Thread network fwiw
Battery life is a big deal and anything with decent speed would hurt that a lot. People won’t want to sacrifice their battery to get strangers online.