Mesh Networks – the Era of Free Calls is Coming.
The first bells are already tolling! The time of mobile ad-hoc networks is coming. The Austrian online newspaper Kleine Zeitung reports about a Swedish compony TerraNet that currently works hard on practical realisation of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN). Ericsson has invested already about 4 mio Euros in this project. Mesh networks are a subtype of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks that unlike pure MANETs assume the usage of acceess points. These access points makes the task of dynamic network organization a bit easier.
The idea of mesh networks is quite easy. You have a group of mobile phones and only few of them are directly connected to an access point. The other phones use their connected neighbours as routers to get an access to the global network too. Thus this technology makes possible free calls over internet without using the GSM service of mobile phone providers. TerraNet made already some tests in Tansania and Equador.
TerraNet’s chief Carlius says that the mobile phone providers are not that very much ready to invest money in development of Mesh networks. It’s obviously that it would mean the end of GSM era. But I’m more than sure that in several years when this technology gets ripe enough and mesh network components will be the standard equipment at mobile phones like Bluetooth or Wlan, it will displace current expensive phone services.