Two popular open-source LoRa mesh projects, Meshtastic and MeshCore, have been forced to confront a conflict with FCC regulation 15.247 that mandates a minimum occupied bandwidth of 500 kHz for certain digitally modulated intentional radiators. Out-of-the-box US configurations violate that rule: MeshCore defaults to 62.5 kHz and Meshtastic to 250 kHz. Developers have introduced compliant options (Meshtastic’s alpha now defaults to 500 kHz), but the rule’s wording and historical ambiguity sparked months of debate over whether frequency-hopping language or power thresholds exempt these peer-to-peer meshes. Compliance is technically straightforward, but changing defaults severs backward compatibility and creates distinct, non-interoperable cohorts of radios.
Field tests in Philadelphia exposed practical tradeoffs: operators found Meshtastic’s narrow-band mode performed better in congested urban RF environments, while the 500 kHz "Long Turbo" mode revealed bugs and hardware incompatibilities that hampered reliability. Philly Mesh migrated many nodes to MeshCore because its protocol coped with interference more robustly, fracturing a formerly open network into multiple incompatible factions. The split promises fragmentation across regions as some users resist migrating, while others explore LoRaWAN-like, frequency-hopping approaches that are inherently compliant. The situation turns an accessible hobbyist ecosystem into a politically and technically fraught landscape.
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