Buzzbelt

Message and buzz everyone nearby when there is no signal.

Buzzbelt is a group chat for trips that needs no internet, no SIM and no roaming. Phones talk directly to each other over Bluetooth — no server, nothing routed through anyone else's phone. Reach is real, and it is direct: tens of metres, phone to phone.

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Free. No account, no phone number, no sign-up. Ask everyone to install it before you leave — downloading the app is the one part that needs the internet.

  • No internet
  • No SIM
  • No accounts
  • Nothing leaves the phones

The problem

Thirty teenagers, a city you don't know, and no way to reach them all at once.

The group spreads out the moment you arrive. Two have gone into a shop. Four are on the far side of the square. One is somewhere behind you taking a photograph of a door. You need all thirty at the meeting point in five minutes, and you need to know when you have them.

Abroad, most of their phones have no data at all. The few that do are on a parent's roaming plan that gets switched off by day two. On a hillside there is no signal to buy at any price. A group chat that needs the internet is a group chat that works at home and stops at the border.

So it comes down to counting heads, walking the square twice, and sending somebody to fetch the two who went into the shop. That works. It also takes twenty minutes every single time, and it is the reason the day runs an hour late by the afternoon.

What doesn't help here

  • The WhatsApp group. Needs data on thirty phones, in a country where thirty phones don't have it.
  • Ringing them. Same problem, plus roaming charges nobody's parents agreed to.
  • "Meet back here at four." Fine until the plan changes, and the plan always changes.
  • Shouting. Carries about as far as your voice, in one direction, once.

Read on

The rest of the guide.

Six short pages instead of one long one — read them in order, or jump straight to the one you need.