Bodies used to improve cell phone signals

Ever experienced the loss of cellphone signal when you’re in a huge mob? (i.e. countdown at a new year’s eve party) If you have, then you know how annoying it is- getting lost in the crowd and not being able to reach your friends with your cellphone. Well, academics at Queens University of Belfast are working on a solution to this problem- using human beings as network nodes. No, this doesn’t mean implanting human beings with chips and wires- rather, the smartphones we carry will be implemented with sensors instead. When in a highly dense location full of people, the phones would then create a body-to-body network (BBN) that would allow phones to boost coverage between themselves before reaching a base station. This would solve the problem of no coverage when there are alot of people, and can even help in disaster situations (i.e. cellular infrastructure has become damaged)- the BBN would provide communication when normally there would be none. The technology is no slouch either- it should be able to match LTE speeds, even allowing large HD files to be transferred. This all sounds like a great idea, if it works as claimed, then I can see the high speed connection used to provide live video streams at concerts with loads of people. What other uses for BBN can you think of?