The Mesh Is Already Here

There is an old rule in this profession: never depend on a single way to communicate. We take it seriously. We build redundant radio systems, maintain satellite phones, stand up amateur radio capabilities, keep backup internet circuits, write communications plans, fill out the ICS 205, test the radios, and then test them again. And yet when the power goes out, when the cellular network saturates, when fiber is cut or internet service simply disappears, communications is still one of the first problems we are managing. Anyone who has spent time in an operations center knows that the failure is rarely the system we planned for. It is the second and third system we assumed would be there.

There is a technology that belongs in that conversation now, and most emergency managers have not yet had it. It is LoRa mesh communications, and two open projects in particular, Meshtastic and MeshCore, have made it possible to build inexpensive, decentralized networks that carry short text messages and small amounts of data without depending on cellular service or the internet. This is not a laboratory concept or a vendor pitch. People are building these networks right now, in our jurisdictions, often without telling us.