I live off-grid in Alaska in an area with no cell coverage. The nearest road is an hour or six away, depending on mode of travel. Most of my travel (when the river isn’t frozen) is by boat. Boats break down, weather happens, and there’s no normal comms here. It’s not uncommon to travel up/down a river system and be gone for a week. In winter, it’s kinda the same thing, but by snowmobile. At home, we have satellite Internet with a small wifi footprint.
I have friends/neighbors with cabins a mile away, 4 miles away, and expanding outward. Some of these folks are very poor and/or elderly, and can’t afford satellite comms, and are effectively cut off. So part of my life includes checking in on them. That’s fine, not complaining. But it would be nice if they had the ability to message me. It would be great if my partner, buddies, and neighbors could send simple texts when something goes sideways, even if it’s just to cancel dinner plans.
Currently, I’m using InReach, and that allows connecting with a small group of people, including whoever is within the WiFi range of my cabin. But it’s limited, expensive, and unreliable. I currently keep it at the minimum plan, which is about $12/mo for a handful of messages. Then when I know I’m going to be gone longer, I raise it to the $45/mo unlimited plan. It’s great compared to nothing, but it’s not great. The Bluetooth connection sucks (often doesn’t transfer messages from the device to the phone), the service sucks (messages sometimes show up never or months later), and they don’t seem interested in doing many updates.
So basically, I’d rather put my money toward buying and assembling $30 radios that I can pass out to people. Everyone I get one to makes the network more robust, and everyone wins.
The next phase is people in the nearest villages. Many have horrible cell service with about 1/4 mile radius. So when those people leave the town bubble, they’re in the same position as me when I leave my cabin’s WiFi bubble.
In other words, my use case is replacing phone service in rural areas,. Even if it’s only “SMS”, it’s a link between people who are currently isolated.
An ideal scenario for me would be radios with bigger antennas I could mount on boat and machines, smaller devices people could carry in their pockets, and base stations on a few hills.