The conversation begins with this question: If we remove cell phone towers, is it possible to have direct mobile-to-mobile data exchanges? This means no WIFI, 3G, etc, to connect the data from one mobile smartphone phone to another. Instead of utilizing cell-towers to connect us, why not a direct transfer of data? Some examples of data exchanges can be phone calls, text messages, media sharing, etc (or simply the transaction of local data from the phone itself and not data from the web). If mobile phones are equipped to send and receive data, why do we need cell phone towers as the middle man? We tend to accept the current structures in place as permanent, when they are not. They currently exist as a gate-keeping mechanism to charge people for services that we already have the resources to bypass!

The conversation ensued regarding everything from rights to frequencies, to drivers and antenna design, to all the things that phone-makers do to make it purposely difficult for this to happen. For example, why can't you use your mobile phone to request data from your home computer (given you are within wireless range for your smartphone to transfer data), which then forwards the data to your phone? What if your mobile phone could connect to a private network with every other mobile phone which locally transfers data from phone to phone?

Some benefits include: 1. cost reduction of bill for voice or data from wireless carriers. 2. direct mobile-to-mobile data transfer instead of through a cell tower bottleneck. 3. privacy.

So I ask, do any of you have insight into how this could possibly happen? Is something like this already in development/production? What changes in a smartphones hardware or software is needed to make this happen? Thanks in advance for your input.

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