The Mobile Mesh Needs a Disaster
by Ewan Spence
want to look into the future of disasters - the so called ‘big ones,’ because while mobile phones are useful in ‘personal emergencies,’ it’s going to be in the large scale disasters that your smartphone could make the difference. At least, with some forward planning.
To a certain extent, mobile phones are already “emergency aware.” By that I don’t mean they’re constantly on the lookout for danger, like some sort of Finnish Knight Rider, but that they have systems in place that become useful in an emergency. The primary one for me, is that no matter what model of phone, even if the key-lock is on, then the emergency number (be it 911, 112, or 911) should still work - there’s no need to try to work out what the key-lock release is. They won’t even care what network they can find; you’re not network locked for an emergency call - if the signal can get through, through it goes.
The problem as I see it, is the reliance of the mobile phone on one thing. The network. Because in a major disaster (let’s pick the “it’s going to happen at some point” earthquake on the San Andreas fault as an example), there’s going to be a lack of power, and a lot of infrastructure damage. Do you think that the network cell towers are going to be around to carry the mobile signals from the handset?
Yet a mobile handset is both a receiver and a transmitter - and there are going to be times when that’s all you have in the disaster area. Traditionally, mobile phones are going to be useless (beyond the ability to take some pretty gruesome pictures). which is a shame, because communication is vital in these situations. If phones could literally piggyback on each other, chaining calls together like some demented Arpanet of mobile voice calls, then these little computers suddenly become a lot more useful in our scenario.
With the inclusion of Wi-Fi on many models perhaps that medium, rather than the GSM frequencies will act as the common carrier - although the range is far more limited than the radio circuitry for cellular calls.
I doubt we’d ever see anything like this on a regular mass market phone, but if Google Android takes off, and you get a bundle of handsets with re-write able firmware, I wouldn’t be surprised if (a) we see a Mesh Network using a mix of cellular and wifi hotspots spring up, and (b) it won’t really be noticed outside geek circles until something horribly big in the Bay Area. So if you start hearing of a strange underground phone network early next year, with no contract, no ties, but not quite 99.99% reliability, you know what’s happening.
