icebound flame

Wouldn’t it be cool if cell phones communicated to each other and could relay calls from one to another? Perhaps cell towers could be eliminated–the mesh network formed by the phones could relay messages across the country. For privacy, you could use public-key encryption between the callers so that no one else would be able to listen to the call. Then again, it’s probably infeasible for a few reasons. 1) It would take up a lot of battery power for each phone to relay other people’s calls. 2) It would have to reach a critical mass before coverage would be good enough. 3) It would not work in rural areas where there aren’t other nodes around to relay a call.