Right now, there are more than 3.9 billion people without regular and reliable access to the Internet. At the same time, a further 2 billion are at risk of losing their reliable connectivity to the Internet due to unforeseen circumstances – natural disasters, political and social unrest, that sort of thing.

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Numerous companies have tried to solve both of these problems, with potential solutions coming from some of the biggest names in the tech space – Facebook, Google and more.

None, however, have been particularly successful.

That is, until now.

With the advent of blockchain technology, the ability to create and execute on the rollout of what’s generally referred to as a ‘parallel Internet’ has become a reality and one company, MeshBox, is pioneering this concept right now.

Some reading might already be familiar with SmartMesh. For those that aren’t, it’s a first mover company that has designed a technology (also called SmartMesh) that serves as the protocol layer for a so-called Mesh network – a system that employs a collection of interconnected notes to create a decentralized network.

This SmartMesh technology was essentially the first step towards the creation and implantation of a parallel Internet and it serves as, as mentioned, a sort of protocol layer that’s comparable to the TCP/IP that underpins the current global Internet framework.

MeshBox, however, which is closely affiliated with SmartMesh, has designed a piece of hardware (also called MeshBox) that serves as comparable to the routing hardware that’s central to existing Internet technology.

MeshBox can be deployed pretty much anywhere, both indoors and out, and, using the SmartMesh protocol, can connect to both other MeshBox units as well as mobile devices (so, smartphones, tablets, etc.) to form a pretty-much compromise-resistant network.

By connecting this network to the Internet, it, in turn, creates a compromise-resistant pathway through which the above-mentioned mobile devices can also connect to the Internet, overcoming pretty much every aspect of the issues introduced at the start of this piece – natural disasters, political and social unrest, etc. – as well as providing a simple, cost-effective and elegant solution to the issues associated with providing reliable Internet connectivity to those without current access.

So where does blockchain technology come in to all of this?

Well, the great thing about a system like this is that, with it resting on blockchain technology, it affords a degree of micro-transaction capability to the network created through the merging of the MeshBox and the SmartMesh technology.

Users who are sharing content across the network can request payment from those consuming the content in tokens associated with the MeshBox blockchain (in this instance, the tokens are called SMT tokens) and the network providers can also charge a fee, payable in tokens, for access to the Internet through the network they have set up.

The bottom line here is that this is a potentially game changing concept that has only really become possible with the advent of blockchain technology and that, in the instance of MeshBox, is being led by a team of industry incumbents including, perhaps most notably, David Cohen – a industry incumbent that was the Founder of Dcntral.ai, an Executive member of the IOTA Foundation and a HashGraph Advisor – in a prominent position on the company’s Advisory Board.

We strongly recommend you check out MeshBox’s White Paper here.

There’s also more information available at the company’s website, here.