IMHO this article misses a couple really important points. First, if the mesh can use Internet or other transports then it will, and it will be built out in a way where these become a necessity. If all you want is a silly new way to text your friends, then something like reticulum will be ok. But if you want a serious solution for emergency response and free communication -- free as in "no one can stop me or control…
The meshcore software, and the common hardware being used, are both comically weak for anything that approaches usage at scale, especially in an emergency situation. The range is extremely limited, and the throughput gets really bad if your packets have to travel more than a few hops. These two factors alone combine to write this off as nothing more than a toy pretty much from the start. There are already unlicensed…
At something like $100/node and 5000 nodes in a major metro (eg: Dallas) it's like a $500k investment and you're maxed out at low data rates and saturated topology.
That's 5k nodes in a (generous) 5 million population and ~500 square mile area. More like 9M people and 9000 square miles. (I checked, and that's "extended metroplex", but reasonable: Decatur to Cleburne, Weatherford to Kaufman).
At 5k nodes saturating an area, it's basically a rich persons toy very well suitable to remote or low-density areas, but NEVER for 1:1 saturation deployment in any sort of high density area.