FireChat

FireChat is a mobile app developed by Open Garden which uses wireless mesh networking to enable smartphones to connect peer-to-peer without an internet connection with the phones BlueTooth or Wi-Fi enabled.
Open Garden - “People need to understand that this is not a tool to communicate anything that would put them in a harmful situation if it were to be discovered by somebody who’s hostile,” - “It was not meant for secure or private communications.” The FireChat app does not encrypt messages.

More than 100,000 Pro-Democracy Protesters in Hong Kong's Central Business District are messaging one another through a network that doesn't require Cell Towers or Wi-Fi. They're using a NEW app called FireChat that utilizes wireless mesh networking, allowing phones connect together to form a temporary Internet. Student Leaders all around Hong Kong are recommending FireChat out of fear that the authorities may shut off communications.

Wireless mesh networks are extremely effective in communication, because there's no easy way to shut them down. Shutting off Cell Phone Towers or the Internet won't stop communications, each phone essentially spreads a reaching signal out to many other devices and they can all connect to one another, which just spreads the network out. You would have to turn off electrical power for a prolonged period of time or confiscate everyone's' phones to completely break the connection. This, nearly impossible to break, connection isn't, life or death, important for the casual chats, but during political upheaval, it could be a lifeline.

"Once you build a mesh network ... now you have a network that is resilient, self-healing, cannot be controlled by any central organization, cannot be shut down and is always working," Christophe Daligault, says. "I think that solves many other drawbacks or challenges of the mobile broadband Internet today."

"Each (phone) becomes a router and in a sense you're growing the Internet - everyone who joins the mesh network creates an extension of the Internet," - "In a year or two from now, I think people won't even remember that you had to be on Wi-Fi or get a cell signal to be able to communicate." - Christopher Daligault - Open Garden's VP of Sales and Marketing.

Download the app and try it for yourself.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.opengarden.firechat&hl=en

https://opengarden.com/firechat