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A few companies have tried building out mesh networks for wireless internet access that was like this. The main problem is bandwidth limitations, when you figure the number of nodes a long distance phone call would have to go through it becomes quite difficult to make it feasible.
Also if we're talking mobiles, then you have to consider battery life. When a phone is acting like a repeater it would be the same as making a call giving you a much lower 'standby' time.
One great thing about a properly designed network such as this is that it would be completely self healing and would route around any local failures.
I think it's a great idea, and as soon as we get much needed advancements in battery technology it will unleash a torrent (heh) of breakthroughs such as this.
I could see a company doing this with landlines right now, just piggyback it on current wireless internet projects through VOIP. Once you've reached a saturation point with that, expanding to mobiles will be a breeze.
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