Patent ID: 8320414

Claim:
A method, comprising: establishing an ad-hoc network between a borrower and at least two lenders of bandwidth; and establishing one lender of the at least two lenders as a multiplexer to manage data flow over the ad-hoc network between the borrower and lenders of the at least two lenders of bandwidth, wherein the ad-hoc network is established such that the borrower communicates with the multiplexer via a cellular communication protocol, and the borrower communicates with another one of the at least two lenders via a local wireless communication protocol that is different than the cellular communication protocol; the establishing the one lender of the at least two lenders as the multiplexer comprises the borrower designating the one lender of the at least two lenders to act as the multiplexer; and the establishing the one lender of the at least two lenders as the multiplexer comprises the borrower transmitting locations of some of the at least two lenders to the multiplexer.