If you're interested in decentralized mesh networks, take a look at Project Meshnet [1], Hyperboria [2], and the cjdns [3] routing software. It's a small, but growing community of people working in a similar space as the edgenet idea mentioned in the post. Decentralized routing and end-to-end encryption, plus there are already hundreds of dedicated nodes bootstrapping communication over the existing Internet.

[1] http://projectmeshnet.org/ [2] http://hyperboria.net/ [3] https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns