Around 2012/2013 I was beginning to get involved with a group of folks who wanted to establish peer-to-peer internet via meshnets, using traditional internet to bridge international gaps until someone could figure out how to do that homebrew style. The problem is that in order for peer-to-peer meshing to work as a replacement for the regular old internet, regular old people have to give a fuck about how they get their data, and regular old people don't give a fuck about how they get their data. Maybe now with a bunch of RaspPis, wifi cards, weather balloons and such a project like that might be a little more feasible, but I doubt it. I would say that the future is municipal broadband, but that's going to be illegal shortly in the few areas it's not already prohibited.