[higherpurpose]

Hopefully with the arrival of the pCell [1] technology, the Wi-Fi Alliance will start working on even longer range and lower bands for Wi-Fi than the 2.4 Ghz band. Lately they've only focused on short ones, but to make Wi-Fi meshnets work we need Wi-Fi that's longer range and doesn't suffer from interference.

As for FireChat itself, the disappointing thing about it is that it doesn't seem to encrypt the messages. So if there's someone listening within range, they can get that conversation. Obviously, this won't be a huge issue in the early days, but I hope they do intend to fix this eventually.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6NEnLvhFCk