The tech has already been proven—carriers just need to be mandated to add it because there's no business reason to do so.
People say that but in the decades since it was thought up mesh networks have never actually managed to work, not at any scale. Routing efficiently is extremely complex especially when all the nodes keep moving around. I concede it may be better than nothing in an emergency but I strongly suspect it's just not very useful in general, which is probably why carriers haven't mandated it. After all if it worked you wouldn't need carriers at all, yet here they are...
In situations without access to a fat, centralized link or situations where resilience is more important than bandwidth or latency, mesh networks are a great choice. Emergencies are such situations but remote areas or low power needs are other situations suited for mesh networks.
Things like LoRa which I've not had a chance to play with yet look extremely promising too for long range, low bandwidth.
If there was good reason for it, and sufficiently easy to set-up kit, I don't see why more people wouldn't help build out networks by setting up routing nodes in their homes; everyone installs a WiFi router because their ISP tells them to, but what about if people's only choice to get internet was to add a femtocell or similar (and it was legal and cost effective)? People would do it.
The real hold up, I'd say, is not so much effectiveness, but need. Nobody _needs_ to usurp the role of their carrier and build out a community network, so it doesn't happen.
If for example, using that network became so costly, say for example, like electricity recently has in the UK and Europe, that for many, building out their own infrastructure with solar and batteries became cost effective, I could see it happening here too; with frequency band licensing etc likely being the main barrier.
> After all if it worked you wouldn't need carriers at all, yet here they are...
It'd work fine in more dense areas. Probably not the higher band 5G stuff, but lower bands and 4G. There's no carrier incentive to do this, that's why OP said "mandated".
Are the inter-satellite links actually active yet? Last I heard Starlink satellites all still needed to be in range of a ground station (explaining the lack of ocean coverage for their marine service)
I'm not sure this proves it, but i can't think of many reasons for that to be the case.
Centrally pushing new routes based on quality/load data is not it.
Especially the infrastructure-less TETRA DMO Direct Mode Operation for ad-hoc communications with the trunking infrastructure down, out of range or over capacity.
And everybody in the Public Safety radio space seems to always laugh when LTE Direct is brought up. Apparently poorly specified and adopted by no vendors.