Thanks for your interest! Ham radio operators have been using various packet switching techniques for global digital communications since at least the 1960's. Back in 1995 I wanted to to create a license-free ad-hoc peer-to-peer network and I realized the key was to have many nodes covering small areas talking to each other through routers.

Back then WiFi did not exist, cell phones were analog, and routers cost $10,000. What I wanted to do required an equipment distribution density that just didn't exist. It was a chicken and egg problem, but I did manage to get a peer-to-peer radio network built out (proving the concept) covering most of Austin Texas and used it to provide an always-on 3MB Internet service to many customers before cable or DSL existed. I found radios that operated in license free modes that could send and receive data over a limited area at rates up to 3Mbps. Unfortunately they cost around $900 each! I repurposed old junk PC's by installing multiple Ethernet interfaces and a floppy drive backwards inside the case with boot code written in assembly language that would turn it into a router when powered up and connected radios to the Ethernet interfaces. These were placed at strategic locations on rooftops of tall buildings and talked to each other in a peer-to-peer system while also providing coverage areas to subscribers who had a unit with only one radio and an Ethernet interface to connect to their internal network. I wanted to build small modules with a radio and a router that could be incorporated in phones and other devices but investors were not interested and there is a long bloody story behind that that one day needs to be told. If you are interested, there are some graphics and posters from that endeavour at this link. We had plans for tablets, streaming players, VOIP, and many things that we take for granted today.

Today cell phones all have wifi and wifi routers are everywhere. If software on the phones and routers could listen for neighbors and pick up and route packets to other neighbors an ad-hoc network could form that would function like the Internet but not have any service providers. Your phone (or pc or whatever) could keep the packets meant for it and route packets onward to more distant locations through anyone within radio range who would then also do the same. Today this could be done with a routing system module replacement and some small changes to the wifi and other protocols. There are issues to work out: packets would go through many more hops so the latency (time for the packet to get to its destination) would be much higher. This would make interactive use sluggish over large areas but streaming would be OK. Also, areas with sparse wifi coverage might be inaccessible unless someone showed up to act as relay. Another problem is that the routing protocols for IP currently used become unwieldy in these kind of networks. All of these issues could be addressed. If more spectrum were allocated and other regulatory issues addressed the speed could be dramatically improved, ultimately providing even more bandwidth than with our current fiber "pipes" because data would be spread out over entire geographies and inaccessible areas could become reachable. The routing problems could be addressed by changes to the way IP addresses are assigned and routed. We experimented successfully with self-generating IP addresses derived from GPS coordinates and routing daemons using that knowledge in addition to discovery only of adjacent neighbors. IPFS, Steem, blockchain technologies, would make a great software infrastructure on top of that to replace DNS and other currently centralized services and application.

The fact is, once worked out all of this could be packaged in a free app for your phone and firmware upgrades for wifi routers and, if people were interested, this new free open source global Internet could become a reality in days simply by people installing an app or replacing the firmware on their router. That's all it would take to make it real. With "net neutrality" and security built into its core a new global Internet owned by everyone and no one would just appear out of nowhere while the "Old Internet" would be relegated to being a shopping mall on its periphery.