https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/21/mesh-plus-plus-seed/

If you’re standing at the water’s edge of the San Francisco Bay, chances are that you have half a dozen high-speed internet providers clamoring for your attention, eager to give you gigabits of internet. That isn’t the case for billions of people in rural communities around the world, who often have to make do with sub-par — if any — service. That’s the market Mesh++ is aiming to serve, and the company just snagged a couple of sacks of cash to help them realize its mission. Headquartered in Chicago and Nairobi, the team is focused on bringing internet connectivity to rural and underserved communities.

On paper, the solution is elegant. You plug a wireless router into power, and the router looks for other nearby Mesh++ routers. They connect and share any available internet connectivity across the mesh network. Each router becomes a node, further spreading the Wi-Fi love across the land. The company claims a single node can blanket 10 acres of Wi-Fi connectivity, supporting up to 100 people. If a local internet connection goes down due to connectivity or power failure, the rest of the network picks up the slack — and if there’s a full breakdown, the network can be used for internal communication, including messaging and news alerts within the network.