goTenna Mesh (and other cool tech) in a Wall Street Journal about our post-net neutrality world:
Since it’s behind a paywall, I’ll share the goTenna bits here (which includes a quote from Mesh Community member @linenoise!):
Daniela Perdomo is concerned about the power of U.S. telecom giants that stand to gain from the repeal of “net neutrality” rules. Her company offers a way around them: A $90 antenna that lets users send messages without cellular service or Wi-Fi.
Ms. Perdomo is among the entrepreneurs whose vision for an alternative route to internet access is finding takers in Silicon Valley, where tech types were rattled by a recent government decision to overturn rules that required big internet providers to treat all traffic equally.
“Society requires connectivity to function and to advance but we are leaving telecommunications in the hands of a few large corporations,” Ms. Perdomo said. “The lack of a choice is a problem.”
(…)
A mesh network may be another alternative to traditional internet access. Instead of accessing the internet through one provider, users of a mesh network pull bits of information from many different nodes—such as phones, laptops and antennas—around them, and often serve as a node themselves.
That is the idea behind Ms. Perdomo’s company goTenna Inc., which makes a strap-on antenna the size of a smartphone that can connect with sister devices several miles away using a radio signal. The devices sync to phones for a connection strong enough to send encrypted texts and GPS coordinates between devices.
As more antennas are added to the network, the messages can be sent over distances surpassing 4 miles. Rather than Wi-Fi or cellular signal, goTenna relies on publicly available radio frequencies.
Ms. Perdomo, a New Yorker who dreamed up goTenna when Hurricane Sandy rendered the city’s cellphone service unreliable in 2012, said her broader goal is to build a free, “bottom up” communica-tion network accessible to all and more reliable than the “top down” networks controlled by a few large companies.
Matt Filip, a 33-year-old field engineer in Downers Grove, Ill., bought a goTenna earlier this year and has since used it to communicate with friends on hunting trips in remote locations. He said he likes the idea of commanding an alternative network to wireless carriers and plans to set it up at home to support other goTenna users.