[jansper39]

Personally, the additional complexity and overheads required for a P2P phone network is not worth while and I'm not sure it would fix that many problems that haven't already been fixed with walkie talkies.

[foltik]

Not worthwhile? “It’s too hard” isn’t a great argument for why our phones should just become useless during power outages, natural disasters, ..

[eddythompson80]

It’s not “too hard”. It’s physically impossible without regulation. There is but one limited RF spectrum that we all share. One bad actor (intentional or misconfigured) can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. The radius of their impact only depends on how much kWHs they have access to and it doesn’t take much to cripple radio communication in a large metropolitan area.

Until some clever cookie can figure out some way to utilize string theory’s extra dimensions for sending signals and then every body can have their own dimension to mess with, collective regulation on broadcasters is the only feasible way.

Nothing is stopping you from getting an HT for communication during power outages, natural disasters, etc. You just have to get a license to make sure you don’t actively harm everyone who is sharing the same spectrum with you especially during said natural disaster.

[lxgr]

Not worthwhile to who?

The point is exactly that everybody is carrying a phone, but almost nobody is carrying a walkie-talkie. And why should I carry one more thing? My smartphone has already replaced my music player, camera...

[jonhohle]

It’s one less thing to have to buy and carry and charge and configure and remember and get others to do the same.