SAN FRANCISCO, C.A.: Open Garden, announces the launch of FireChat, its new off-the-grid private messaging technology (OM). FireChat users can send and receive private messages anywhere, even if they aren't connected to the Internet or to a cellular network.
“Forget SMS and IM, here comes OM. Off-the-grid messaging which allows any community to create their own network for instant public and private communications, regardless of available infrastructure and traditional centralized networks,” says Micha Benoliel, co-founder and CEO of Open Garden.
Today communication apps require Internet access and protocols meaning when Internet access or cellular phone networks are not available or congested, communications apps struggle to or don’t work.
But FireChat can thanks to its peer-to-peer mesh networking technology and 'store and forward' capability, it transmits messages from phone to phone until the messages reach the intended recipient.
To get a fair idea of its capability if all networks in a city were down, and approximately 5 percent of the city's population was on FireChat it would take about 10 to 20 minutes of message delivery time to cover the entire city.
“This innovation paves the way for the next evolution of the Internet: networks created by the people, for the people,” adds Benoliel.
Users can now communicate through their smartphones without a data plan or even a network. This technology delivers a brand new way to create communication networks that do not require capital, scale infinitely and can spread rapidly.
FireChat is enabling large scale offline messaging and solving challenging technological issues like off-the-grid identity, addressing, routing, encryption, and interoperability between operating systems. All FireChat private messages are encrypted from end to end meaning only the sender and recipient can read a private message and no one else has access to the content of private messages.
