No internet required… In this video, I build a public Reticulum node and test whether it can bridge completely different networks into one encrypted communication path. I send messages from a normal phone over LTE, through the internet and Starlink, then off-grid over LoRa—eventually using a $20 drone-mounted relay to reach a phone with no internet connection at all.
Exactly the problem: bandwidth and latency.
The radio frequencies these run at and the power they’re allowed to use limits them to very very low bandwidth for data transfer. They can’t even do a low bitrate audio stream.
What they can do is messaging without 3rd party oversight and with adhoc data links. They’re very very cool for offline networks, especially in places without extant infrastructure for transmissions.