This is the first post that really sparked my imagination about The Other Half. Lots of possibilities to build dedicated devices to different environments and tasks. Jolla really should make their marketing material more concrete to target their true early adopter audience.
I have an idea for The Other Half: an Xbee 802.15.4 module that could facilitate a distributed telecommunications network between mobile handsets. I have my eye on David Rowe's open source codec2 to support voice calls because it can achieve telephone quality at 1400 bits-per-second, and I think that at this bandwidth multiple calls can be relayed efficiently, (and _securely_), though a mesh network. If a handset has WiFi access then calls can then route through the internet and path around the world. If we want to continue to use the antiquated practice of telephone numbers as identifiers, then we can use cryptographic primatives and a blockchain, (like bitcoin), to prove telephone number-handset authenticity on the new peer-to-peer network.
Combine this with a Jolla phone for a connection to a conventional cellular network and perhaps a handset could move seamlessly through peer-to-peer calling, handset-to-VoIP calling, and the PTSN.
Then the day may come where we can finally do away with these telecommunications companies, and have a decentralized and secure-by-design phone system once and for all.
