I've watched networking scale from spending 9 hours downloading a book over 110bps (yes, that's one hundred ten bits per second) dialup as an amazing ability, to streaming multiple live HD video from anywhere to wireless devices at 17Mbps (contrast seventeen million bits per second) as a cultural norm.
I do not doubt the ability to solve technical and financial challenges associated with scaling up an ad-hoc network. Been there, done that, can do it again.
