Swedish company TerraNet has announced a technology that allows peer-to-peer calling between cell phones. The phones search out other phones within a kilometer radius, and make the calls directly, phone to phone, bypassing the base station. One intermediate phone could apparently be used to relay a call to another phone out of range. Think Skype, but on mobile devices.
Heads are going to start spinning at mobile companies, but rather than do the Linda Blair, wouldn't it make the most sense to try to partner with TerraNet? After all, another use for this technology might be to increase the capacity of already overloaded base stations by offloading the local calls onto the handset. European carriers are already trying to do this with FMC plays.
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