On the eve of Uganda’s general election, the government threatened to block the decentralized communication app Bitchat, but Bluetooth mesh networks make “unplugging” difficult to implement
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Table of Contents

• Download surge under the shadow of disconnection
• Technical armor of Bluetooth mesh networks
• Parallel communication experiments amid global turmoil
• Rapidly rising costs of information censorship

With only ten days left until the January 15 Ugandan presidential election, the streets of Kampala are tense. Nyombi Thembo, CEO of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), claimed in a TV interview that government engineers “can shut down any application threatening national security at any time.” However, Calle, the anonymous developer of the decentralized messaging app Bitchat, responded on X with a cold remark:

“Good luck, buddy. You can’t stop Bitchat, and you can’t stop us.”

The standoff between the two instantly shifted the focus of “who can control the flow of information” to the core pre-election concern.

Download surge under the shadow of disconnection

Ugandan citizens’ fears of “unplugging” are not unfounded. During the 2016 and 2021 elections, the government ordered nationwide internet shutdowns twice. Although UCC currently denies plans for further blocks, public trust has been repeatedly broken. Opposition leader Bobi Wine has called on supporters to download Bitchat; within a few weeks, the app’s downloads in Uganda surged to 400,000, about 1% of the country’s population. For many voters, decentralized tools are no longer just technological novelties but vital equipment to ensure communication on election day.

Technical armor of Bluetooth mesh networks

Traditional network censorship relies on ISPs to block IP addresses or perform DNS poisoning, functioning like toll booths: close the gates, and vehicles cannot pass. Bitchat’s design subverts this centralized model. It uses Bluetooth mesh networks, allowing messages to hop between phones via peer-to-peer (P2P) connections. When device density is sufficient, the entire city becomes an invisible “small router,” capable of transmitting text, images, and encrypted wallet signatures without SIM cards, central servers, or internet backbone.

According to technical specifications, messages are end-to-end encrypted with Curve25519 and AES-GCM. Users do not need to register with phone numbers or emails. If the government wants to terminate communication, it would need to confiscate all smartphones or launch radio interference nationwide, which is clearly difficult to achieve through administrative orders alone.

Global turmoil and parallel communication experiments

Uganda is not the only battlefield testing the resilience of decentralized communication. During Nepal’s corruption protests in 2025, Bitchat’s user base instantly increased by 50,000; during Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, most cell towers were down, and mesh networks became the last rescue channel for victims. These cases demonstrate that when infrastructure is impacted by political or natural shocks, peer-to-peer protocols can quickly self-organize alternative channels, filling the information vacuum.

Developer Calle states plainly:

“We don’t need anyone’s permission to write code.”

Contrasting with Nyombi Thembo’s traditional regulatory authority, this statement shifts focus to a deeper contradiction—whose power is greater: legal directives or mathematical encryption?

Rising costs of information censorship

From political and market perspectives, this standoff sends a clear signal: by 2026, the difficulty and cost of fully blocking information flow will be much higher than before. Whether governments can resort to more aggressive measures remains to be seen, but as long as two phones can “handshake” via Bluetooth, messages can bypass gateways and continue to circulate. Regardless of the election outcome, the balance of technological power has begun to tilt irreversibly.

Nyombi Thembo emphasizes “the most centralized” engineering team in the country, but in the face of distributed Bluetooth nodes, traditional intermediary control tools are gradually losing effectiveness. The Uganda incident thus becomes a rehearsal for global decision-makers: if they insist on relying on gateway thinking, every “unplugging” action in the future may be like sweeping waves with a broom—politically costly and limited in effect.

Next, whether voters can maintain communication on election day will be the most direct test of this technology; for outsiders, Kampala may be staging a modern version of “notes at the toll booth,” bringing humanity’s pursuit of information freedom onto a more invisible and harder-to-intercept stage.