No internet required… In this video, I build a public Reticulum node and test whether it can bridge completely different networks into one encrypted communication path. I send messages from a normal phone over LTE, through the internet and Starlink, then off-grid over LoRa—eventually using a $20 drone-mounted relay to reach a phone with no internet connection at all.
I believe this stuff is going to be huge. Reticulum, Lora, Meshtastic all bit players now in a drama that has yet to get a finished script. It will start out as a supplement to the Internet, allowing you connectivity even when your Internet falters and as it becomes more ubiquitous, it will be increasingly used/usable and increasingly important. It can’t be shut down, it can’t be controlled. A country would literally have to ban radio signals of any kind in order to shut it down. It’s free. Buy the hardware, use the network, because you are the network. I love this.
LoRa is very low bandwidth, only suitable for short text messages. Radio frequencies are heavily regulated, easy to triangulate, and can be shutdown. People could build a higher speed, planned WiFi mesh; hops just have to be closer. Neighborhoods could build cat6 and fiber into meshes if they wanted to as well.
It doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination to see a torrent-like system utilizing all available devices within earshot to spread the bandwidth around to realize a pretty fast system available nearly everywhere in dense urban areas and slower (but ubiquitous) coverage the more rural you get. Obviously we’re far away from that now, but this definitely seems like the future to me.