LocustWorld: Swarming over the traditional telcos

At present, both Lander and Anderson work from home offices, so any would-be directors might have to make do with a desk in the wardrobe. But it's the deal with Asterisk that perhaps offers the best chance of upsizing to a shiny LocustWorld HQ.

No lesser an authority on open source than Jon "Mad Dog" Hall predicted in October that Asterisk would help to make the open source telephony market bigger than that of Linux.

Because the MeshAP now supports Asterisk, meshes powered by LocustWorld can carry VoIP traffic to other mesh users and also via the Internet to a telephone anywhere in the world.

LocustWorld also sells a service called Mesh Voice aimed at corporate customers who want to replace their office PBX phone system with something a bit more twenty-first century. This includes a deal letting them link their voice traffic with the public telephony network.

In theory, this VoIP support means a mesh customer could dispense with their BT phone line and do voice and high-speed data over the Web via mesh.

Lander, to his credit, doesn't play the hype card by claiming that mesh VoIP will slay the likes of BT or Vodafone. He's not ruling out making them sweat a little though.

"It's not about mesh overtaking PSTN networks, it's all about them working together," he says, suggesting that users will benefit from accounts on several different networks.

"VoIP and voice over mesh can provide competition to mobile companies," he adds, claiming that while it won't make them go bust this competition might "hurt their profits a bit".

A typical single mesh rollout today could include as many as 200 individual nodes, or Meshboxes. A network of this size could easily support over a thousand users. If LocustWorld's growth continues, its user base could be attractive to a range of service providers.

"The mesh lowers the boundaries to entry for 1,001 companies offering different services," says Lander. He sees LocustWorld as an "umbrella" under which many different products can be offered.

"It's the difference between railways and roads. To operate a railway network you need billions of dollars, but anyone can buy a car and provide a service on any scale -- be it a white van man or [haulage magnate] Eddie Stobart."

And it seems there's no shortage of people keen to enjoy the ride. The 53 countries where a LocustWorld mesh has been installed are as far afield as Spain (lots of ex-pat developments with no telecoms networks built), Bangladesh and Honduras (both places where mobile phone networks are a bit pricy for local pockets). The day after our meeting Lander was meeting with a visitor from Nigeria to talk mesh, and an interested party from Turkey was expected a few days later.

The MeshAP can actually be downloaded for free, so LocustWorld only makes money if someone buys Meshboxes as well or chooses Mesh Voice or the MeshAP-Pro -- a commercial service that offers a proper service level agreement and more features than the standard MeshAP.

There are around 10,000 Meshboxes out there at present, up from 8,000 in the summer, so growth is healthy. Many individual networks are doubling in size every three to six months, the kind of exponential progress the IT world has grown used to in the chip sector. "This is the Locust Law," jokes Lander, comparing it to Moore's Law.

Twenty-nine percent of all LocustWorld meshes are in the UK, making it the second largest market after the US' 38 percent. There have been indications that the British mesh market is becoming more sophisticated. Three community networks have recently upgraded to MeshAP-Pro, suggesting that their users now expect a proper service and are prepared to pay more for it.