The Weather Company, a weather forecasting and information technology company, has developed a new app that can spread emergency alerts about weather and natural disasters, even without the aid of cellular networks.

According to MIT Technology Review, the 'Mesh Network Alerts' can transmit emergency alerts from phone to phone through Bluetooth and WiFi. These messages can cover a long distance by connecting multiple links between devices.

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This technology is more useful than the alert messages given by governments since these will not work when cellular networks go down.

Nirmit Desai, an IBM researcher, said that their objective is to expand the distance of how the data is transferred so that the forecast alerts can reach users when needed. This feature is a perfect example of a technique called mesh networking.

Mesh networking will be initially activated by The Weather Company for users in India. Once activated, it will branch out to 41 countries around the world.

Mesh networking technology is also a battery-saver and can transform smartphones into "nodes" and not as obligatory access points.

Digital communications have expanded as mesh networking was developed by military, corporate, and academic researchers. The proliferation of smartphones also increased the possibility of connections without internet connection.

If the development of mesh technology is successful, Weather Company and IBM will expand the project to a larger scale. IBM purchased the Weather Company's technology assets in 2015.

Paul Gardner-Stephen, an Australian senior lecturer, said that Google would be compelled to make numerous devices compatible with mesh networking. Gardner-Stephen leads the Serval Project, another form of mesh networking technology, for places with cellular networks.

Gardner-Stephen added that developers will experience a challenge in creating a technique where mesh networking can work. A majority of the people living in poor regions have smartphones running on the Android operating systems, which does not support mesh networking.