Electronics360: "Wireless Device Allows Users to Send Messages and Use GPS Tracking Without Cellular Data"

Nice article, no links. The link for Kick Starter only goes to a partial video.

A trivial search turns up the Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sonnet/sonnet-decentralized-mobile-communication

It looks like you carry a unit around with you, it provides a wifi hotspot with only one function: connecting to a single URL which you can use for communication. They plan to allow routing of internet traffic in a FW update in February.