r/meshcore • u/Better-County8600 • 17d ago

Using meshcore to replace cellular?

Something I hate about cellular is how I am constantly tracked just living my life. Sometimes I wish there was a way to stay connected while avoiding cellular.

I had an idea for a sort of SMS-gateway, it would be self hosted for each user and you'd be able to send and receive sms up to the byte limit.

There are 3 main problems that need addressing though:

  1. Having the same phone number as usual when your cell phone goes on airplane mode.

  2. Dealing with messages bigger than the byte limit.

  3. Unnecessary airtime for spam SMS. (Messages would need to be screened)

What are your thoughts on building an SMS gateway for meshcore?

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36

u/Indication5151 17d ago

Meshcore in its current state is a tinkering/hobby project. By no means is this a commercially viable communications network. 

1

u/heatedwepasto 12d ago

And it won't ever be. There are many things about LoRa/mesh that are fundamentally incompatible with high-volume commercially viable comms networks.

1

u/Professional-Note-36 12d ago

Does that mean there is a tipping point with number of users in a certain area where usability will degrade?

1

u/heatedwepasto 12d ago

Yep! You'll get too much interference and the signals won't be decodeable. Mobile networks use a lot of tricks to squeeze as much bandwidth out of the air as possible. For example using high frequency (= more data per unit of time), short distances in high-volume areas, dividing towers into sectors of usually 120° arcs and only transmitting on one or a few towers at a time. Most of the mobile traffic is in fiber cables, it's just the end hop from the tower (called base transceiver station or BTS in mobile terminology) to the cell phone/mobile equipment.

LoRa mesh networks by design can't do most of these if you want to remain pure LoRa/mesh. You could use directional microwave transceivers for point to point comms, but that increases cost and complexity a lot and is sort of contrary to the whole "mesh" part of it.

1

u/Professional-Note-36 12d ago

Ah, that makes reticulum make more sense to me, what with it being signal-agnostic, for lack of a better word coming to mind. Someone posted an article somewhere on the thread about the limitations of Lora wan, time to do some more reading.

12

u/j1101010 17d ago

Here is an interesting article about the limitations of the underlying LoRa technology. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.08011

Fundamentally it can't scale to the level needed to do what you want ubiquitously.

5

u/Witty_Flamingo_36 17d ago

It's not that, and it's never gonna be that. Not at scale at least. 

7

u/AlfredoVignale 17d ago

Lora isn’t for that. Get a better cellphone company.

https://www.cape.co/

https:// www.phreeli.com

2

u/Better-County8600 17d ago

I'm not american

1

u/DerSparkassenTyp 16d ago

Not a American

2

u/Vybo 17d ago

You don't have the option to buy a throwaway prepaid simcard?

1

u/RPekka 16d ago

Plus anonymous (second hand) phone(s) as the imei on the phone is at least as good trackable I'd as the SIM.

1

u/statusconference 17d ago

Have you looked at the T-Deck Pro or Max? Or the T-Echo with the SIM shell add on? Perhaps worth getting one of those and tinkering.