Smartphones can form mesh networks with WiFi, but neither of the duopoly OSes have this as a built-in feature, it's left to apps, and that fragments the potential. The most powerful radio isn't user-controllable, it's strictly pay-to-play and operating a base station is heavily licensed, no peer-to-peer activity is possible.
This is something I'd like to see disrupted, although I'm not holding my breath. I don't like that grid failure or (more likely) government order can knock smartphones off the network so easily as they can.
Back in the days (very early 2000s), Amsterdam got WLAN network called Wireless Oost. This gave people in Amsterdam Oost wireless internet access throughout the neighborhood, without needing cable internet from A2000 (later merged with Chello, who merged with UPC, who merged with Ziggo, all the time owned by a certain company known as Liberty Global (you might have heard of them)). It also served as a (W)LAN. Back then, the local computer club ASCII (comprised of political activists and such, predecessor of the hackerspaces) had a cargo bike called Bakscii (derived from Dutch world of cargo bike (bakfiets) and ASCII). This provided WLAN access at demonstrations and such. It was a neat project which Internet Archive likely still holds.
I was never directly involved with said project, btw, but I knew all of the people who were. Nowadays, I live near Amsterdam and will get 1 gbit symmetric fiber internet soon (most of NL already has access to it). I use a Wireguard tunnel to connect via any network (LTE/NG/WLAN) via my home network which runs Pi-Hole. My point being, security has improved, but there is a constant: wireless internet usage can be triangulated, eavesdropped, and clients can be tracked. It is something we need to live with. Every time I leave my smartphone at home even for something as small as picking up my kids at school or sports I feel good. However I can easily be tracked by all the doorbell cameras in the street.
We are done with subversion on the internet. It is over, a done deal. I've given up many years ago, and eventually I also embraced the thought of such. If you want some private time together go to some cave in Turkey or whatever.
Smartphones can form mesh networks with WiFi, but neither of the duopoly OSes have this as a built-in feature, it's left to apps, and that fragments the potential. The most powerful radio isn't user-controllable, it's strictly pay-to-play and operating a base station is heavily licensed, no peer-to-peer activity is possible.
This is something I'd like to see disrupted, although I'm not holding my breath. I don't like that grid failure or (more likely) government order can knock smartphones off the network so easily as they can.