I'm a small hardware builder out of Dayton, Ohio. For the last year I've been working on a portable connectivity platform designed for EM teams operating when cell infrastructure is degraded or down.
The short version: it bonds T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T simultaneously with automatic load balancing with Starlink. Two separate WiFi networks, one prioritized for ops, one rate-limited for public/community access. Fits in a ruggedized case, sets up in under five minutes, runs on internal battery for 6+ hours.
The use case I built it for is that first 24-72 hour window after an incident, when local teams are on scene but the bigger deployable assets (COLTs, CORDs, etc.) haven't arrived yet. That gap where teams are running on personal hotspots or just going without.
I just delivered my first unit to a disaster relief organization in Louisiana. Still very early.
I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people who work in this space:
- Does this solve a real problem you've experienced, or am I overestimating the gap?
- What would make something like this actually useful vs. just another piece of kit that sits in a closet?
- What am I probably not thinking about?
Happy to answer any questions about how it works. Not here to sell anything, just trying to build something that's actually worth carrying into the field.