Bitchat: A Messaging App That Works Without the Internet. Available for Android

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has introduced an experimental app called Bitchat, that allows people to send each other messages without an internet connection.

Bitchat is available for both iPhones and Android. The Android version download page is here (latest apk here) Don’t download it expecting to start chatting away with all your contacts for free – it’s all still experimental for now so really for the curious looking to play with new tech.

What does BitChat do exactly?

The official description so far is:

A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks. No internet required, no servers, no phone numbers. It’s the side-groupchat.

So, using Bluetooth, phones with the app connect to each other creating a mesh network. The more the phones the bigger the network, allowing a message to hop from one phone to the next until it reaches its destination.

Basically it means communicating without centralised things like base stations that are owned by internet companies like Econet, MTN and TelOne. Ideally, as long as your phone has battery, you can messages people for free.

And that’s not just free as in dollars not paid to your provider. Also free from Meta’s central control of all the messaging in your life and business on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram etc…

Yes, unfortunately Meta (and other companies like them) has the power to ban whomever it chooses from using WhatsApp, and they don’t owe you any reason, or WhatsApp-independent appeal process. This problem here is what’s motivating people like Dorsey to build alternative decentralised apps.

What will Bitchat do that hasn’t been tried already?

The “offline” Bluetooth enabled comms concept is not new. It’s been tried several times but there has never been an app that’s managed to get a critical mass mesh network to actually work for the everyday person.

Dorsey himself acknowledged one such app that exists called Fernweh – available for both Android and iPhones. Such apps have reportedly been used to communicate in disaster situations when base stations have been destroyed by, say, a weather event or a war. They have also apparently been used when governments shut down the internet for one reason or the other.

I remember attempting to use one such an app myself back around 2020 when the Zim government seemed trigger happy with internet shutdowns. I had limited success – I never got to communicate with anyone distant who was just on Bluetooth.

And what happens for messages that have to go overseas? Won’t we need someone’s undersea fibre cable at some point? And how to do those owners of infrastructure get paid? And on the issue of control, aren’t our phones controlled by Google, Apple and governments anyway?

Still extremely happy to see the people with means taking a go at it. It’d be great for someone to have a breakthrough on this problem.