And that's not needed either. The purpose is communicating with each other in cases that the government brought down or is heavily filtering the internet (like happens in Egypt, Libia, etc), or in case of a disaster. It doesn't have to be as fast, or robust as the internet. 56k is plenty enough if you just want to send messages or small photos.

And in places no internet connectivity exists at all, it's better than nothing. We're just very, very spoiled.