content: decentralized armies  It's called your local militia. Join one or form one. To a lesser (or greater, depending on how you look at it), (US) state militias or guards - usually not standing armies, but nonetheless call-able reserves that answer to the governors of the individual states.  cell phone networks  Decentralized or independent? The Zeta cartel built their own cell towers in Mexico - but those were eventually found and seized. There've been a couple hardware and software experiments with building ad-hoc mesh networks out of willing participants phones, creating a peer-to-peer network but AFAIK those haven't taken off in wide usage. I think the big blocker is that battery power is precious, and it's a hard sell to give up your mobile device's charge to facilitate other people's communication when you're not using it. Some blockchain-style reward system where you're compensated for your network contribution, maybe? Or open-source hardware & software work that makes it affordable for everyone and their mother to run a cell tower. You'd still need some incentive, though... A couple ISPs tried doing that by running a public hotspot ("isolated," allegedly) off of the wireless access points that they gave to all paying customers, the idea being that they could sell access to their nationwide network of "free" hotspots, with paying customers subsidizing the hardware and operating costs (because it runs off their normal, residential gateway). This was poorly-received by those individuals. So, still probably need an incentive even if it's nondisruptive to those running it.