Also, the hardware for good peer to peer communication is just not present in regular phones. Some libre hardware projects do have optional addons for LoRa, such as the PinePhone: https://pine64.org/documentation/Phone_Accessories/LoRa/
Perhaps you mean p2p phone calls. Fine - although I have a hard time believing that the 900 Mhz radios capable of talking to a tower literal miles away are physically incapable of talking to each other. They're just programmed not to. In any case, the inconvenience and unreliability of sending files 3 feet, vs the streamlined experience of sending them via a corporate datacenter thousands of miles away, demonstrates that this is not about hardware. This is about software, and by extension about control.
Hence LoRa. Yes, 5G would be an option but the licensed spectrum (and firmware restriction) makes that impossible.
>It's absurd that modern phones can talk to satellites hundreds of kilometers above, but not to other phones a few meters away in the same room, airplane cabin, train car etc.
Common everyday filesharing, not meshnet fantasies.