Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators finding it difficult to communicate over congested mobile-phone networks are downloading the application FireChat about 100,000 times a day in an effort to stay connected.
Open Garden Inc's FireChat, which gained popularity during protests this year in Iraq and Taiwan, allows users to send messages using Bluetooth or peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, which is optimal for places where cellular networks are congested.
Protesters massing in Hong Kong's Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok districts are overwhelming wireless carrier networks, making applications such as Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat and WhatsApp Inc difficult to use. Demonstrators are fuelling the 100,000 downloads of FireChat per day among Hong Kong's 7 million people, said Stanislav Shalunov, chief technology officer of Open Garden.
