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Waves with Wireless Nerd
An interview with Helium Network GM Mario Di Dio About The Helium Decentralized Connectivity Revolution: From IOT to WiFi to 5G & MVNO
Unlock the secrets of decentralized connectivity with Mario Di Dio, the General Manager of Network at Nova Labs / Helium, as we explore the groundbreaking journey of the Helium Network. Discover how Helium's innovative approach to creating a decentralized wireless network allows individuals to share their internet connections and earn Helium tokens. Starting from a focus on IoT innovation with LoRaWAN technology, Helium has grown into a global force with a million hotspots, and is now riding the 5G wave by transitioning to the Solana blockchain for even more exciting opportunities.
Step into the world of Mobile Virtual Network Operators with Helium Mobile, where we're shaking up the industry by offering a unique $20 unlimited data plan powered by T-Mobile. Subscribers benefit from lower costs and earn rewards by connecting through Helium hotspots, all while using their favorite devices like iPhones and Samsung Galaxies. Small businesses and public spaces can join the network by hosting hotspots, attracting traffic, and mining tokens, with technical requirements that are surprisingly straightforward.
The expansion continues across the United States and Mexico, thanks to partnerships with major carriers like AT&T and Telefonica's Movistar. This strategic growth not only improves connectivity in underserved regions but also supports seamless cross-border roaming. The Helium network enhances indoor cellular coverage and offers cost-effective mobile subscriptions. Plus, explore the benefits of discovery mapping, where subscribers can opt-in to create coverage heat maps and earn rewards. Join us as we navigate the future of connectivity through innovation and strategic partnerships with companies and services like Helium!
Hey everybody, it's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and I've got a very special guest today. We've been lining up some really fun interviews, and so I want to expose a little bit about what's happening in the industry as a whole to everyone who's around, and maybe introduce you to people that you might not already know, and so with that, mario, I'm going to let you introduce yourself real quick, man. Who are you? Why am I talking to you today? What's going on, man?
Speaker 2:Hello on, man. Hello drew good morning well, okay, so thank you for having us. So so my name is mario didio.
Speaker 2:I'm with, uh, I'm the general manager of network at nova labs, which is the company behind the helium network, which is this interesting decentralized wireless uh technology. You know been in the industry for about 15 years, used to work uh work at Kepo Labs for a long, long time, so I'm definitely a fan of telecommunications. That's what I've always done and I love connectivity and this idea of what's in the future and how we provide connectivity to people. I think it's a thing that will shift and change as technology evolution goes along, and I think we got something really interesting with the Helium network.
Speaker 1:And it's great to explore it here, interesting to say the least, man. I mean what you guys are doing is crazy and check this out, totally not planned. There's a box sitting here on the side look at this thing, look at this.
Speaker 1:What do you know about that man? You know if, if I look around in my office and and and I look at the, I look at the toys that I've collected over the years when helium was first introduced, the opportunity was so incredible. It was like, oh my God, they're doing, wait, they're doing what? And so the concept and correct me if I'm wrong, let's start at the beginning, right? The concept is that if I have an internet connection here at my house and I want to share my internet connection with anyone who comes over to my house, you give them a key, you give them a passphrase, you onboard them in some way, shape or form so that they can get connected to your network, but they end up just using your network for whatever it is and you just give them your bandwidth, no big deal. And a lot of times, if you live in a community where there's an adjacent building or an adjacent neighbor, an apartment, a house, whatever it is, those people also have access to your network if you have an open network. So wouldn't it be cool if you could take that and monetize that in some way, shape or form? You could make it so that people?
Speaker 1:This is the first concept, right, was that? How do you take your network and allow people to access it so that everyone has unfettered access anywhere they go and create this web of open access, but for the people that are paying for the pipes, get some type of way to compensate them. And that first type of way to compensate them was that HNT. It was a helium token, like pre-Solana, right, it was that helium token. So, starting there, with that in mind, you all have gone in a number of different directions and there's a lot of really great things that have happened. Now to naming stadiums. After you all, like, I mean, you know, after that first little part, where did it go from there and did you come in at that phase, or when did you get involved in Helium?
Speaker 2:So, basically, you know, like Helium, like you said, we started a long time ago our CEO, founder.
Speaker 2:Amir Alhim and together with Frank Mong, our CEO, and others and Abai Kumar, which is the CEO of the foundation, started a long time ago with this idea, like you said, of what can I do? How can I create a network which, instead of being owned by a single company or a few companies, it's actually owned by the company. It means that, like you said, you have your internet connection, you connect this device. We call it hotspot in the lingua, and those are devices that create a connection. So in 2018 and 19 and 20, it was about iot, so it was a laura a laura one uh connection that created and that network grew. It grew internationally, all the way to like to get to a million hotspots deployed globally and you know there's messages it's exchanged for Internet of Things in that network, which is still well and in line.
Speaker 1:So look at this. So here's a rack wireless. You can't see it's not focusing too well, but if you look, I drew the. I drew the helium logo on this one because I was comparing it to some other lorawan devices. So this rack wireless. When I use this to track my golf cart around the neighborhood, so then when my 12 year old daughter decides to go over to the neighbor's house like real first world problems right, so I could, I could track it, and it was the idea that you could use this network to do something low cost and innovative to spawn creativity. I skipped I totally. I mean, I'd forgotten about the IoT component.
Speaker 2:That's how it started, right, yeah that's how it started and it's exactly what you said. They were like it started being an internet or that you know, namely, still didn't have meaning. There were a lot of use cases that needed to be created, and were created as they go. So that's what was amazing about the IoT side of the story. So what happened is that about, I think three or four years ago, the founders? There were two things happening in the industry. Of course, the 5G wave was in full swing, and so the idea was like is that possible to recreate the same type of mechanism? And, by the way, just for close the loop on IoT, everything is powered by a blockchain, which is the back. Then was the healing blockchain in terms of what they call layer one.
Speaker 2:Now today is on Solana, which is one of the other top blockchain protocols and the idea was can I reproduce this blockchain incentive mechanism to create coverage, what they call decentralized wireless back then into the mobile industry more of like our devices that we use every day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think there was that middle part where it was like okay, well, how do we do that with Wi-Fi, like what can we do from a Wi-Fi perspective to make that happen?
Speaker 2:Right, and so what happened is that we started with 5G and mobile and started with CBRS. The device that you just pointed at before is a Freedom 5 gateway. So there was this company, funded by Boris Reski, which is our general manager of wireless, so Nova, and Joey Padden, which is our VP of architecture'm very fascinated by the this idea of convergence of mobile standards. So there is cbrs, but it is also wi-fi, so we started working on wi-fi, yeah, so, okay.
Speaker 1:So I mean that was what an interesting time. And then now, so, so now it's, it's uh compensating people for compensating people for using Wi-Fi. Now, with CBRS, you know, and I don't. You know, there were a couple of partners, I guess at the time on the Wi-Fi side I'm trying to think of who it was. There were helium, there were hotspots that you could enable helium on. Do you remember like was that before you or was that like a Wi-Fi hotspot?
Speaker 2:But there was still basically what you could do. You could effectively create IoT hotspots. You can bring your own device.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then you all have equipment that you all sell, right? Exactly so there's Wi-Fi equipment for that that allows you to mine token by leveraging your existing Wi-Fi service. That's the Wi-Fi side, but the exciting stuff's in CBRS, right? The exciting stuff is in offload for CBRS and enabling Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2:But, as I said, as we started going into that realm of CBRS and Wi-Fi for carrying data. This is news that we've been hitting the news a couple of times already in the past couple of weeks. We're actually focusing more on Wi-Fi, and why? Is because, if you follow the industry trends, there is this technology enablement that probably some of the technical people that follow you they know about this passpoint of open roaming. Never heard of it.
Speaker 1:Just kidding. Just kidding the word that you do.
Speaker 2:Just kidding, just kidding. Effectively, what it is is the ability to, like you said, segment your Wi-Fi network in a way that it can be accessible securely and safely by anybody, with a simple integration that does not require you to ask for the password and whatnot. So we started to dig in those trenches a lot, and what we find out is that not only there is a lot of interest, there is actually a growing interest in Passpoint and what they call carrier offload. What carrier offload means? It means that there are now ways for carriers like AT&T, mobile Verizon to effectively automatically bring their users into the Wi-Fi network in a seamless way using Passpoint and complement their macro network.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this then there's a break off there between an MVNO Mobile Virtual Network Operator, and the term MVNO is when you have for lack of a quicker way to explain it. You've got AT&T, t-mobile, whoever it is, and they have all their infrastructure, they have their tower sites, everything is set up. But a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, an MVNO, offers services that they purchase and wholesale from those carriers and they get to use their same existing infrastructure, and these are companies like Tracfone. Boost Mobile was a big one until they started carving out their own 5G. You've got Mint Mobile. You have all these MVNOs that have been able to push a marketing campaign and resell services on those towers as a mobile virtual network operator. Where does this fall into that? Because this isn't a traditional MVO in the sense that you're using the infrastructure for the most part. But is there an MVNO play there with what Helium's doing? How does that world work?
Speaker 2:There absolutely is, and that's why, actually, when I say initially I look after more of our network unit inside Nova. There is another network unit which actually we do have an MVNO, our own MVNO. It's called Helium Mobile. It was launched in partnership with T-Mobile and what our Helium Mobile MVNO does utilizes the network in this way, like I just described, so that, effectively, if you buy the Helium Mobile plan which, by the way, a little bit Self-advertisement- Go for it.
Speaker 2:Go for it. How much is it? It's $20 a month for a limited data tax and call, and it's by far the cheapest unlimited data plan in the state. Why? It's because of this concept. Many, in strategic locations where it matters, we are able to lower down our own costs and the result of that, we can lower down the price for the end user, for the end subscriber.
Speaker 2:So the way it works if you are an MDNO, if you are a Helium mobile subscriber, as soon as you're close to a Helium hotspot, you'll be automatically connected to it and you start using data, and the owner of the hotspot gets rewarded for the amount of data they get transferred over their own hotspot.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then it does work as an MVNO on. You said T-Mobile, is that who your partner is?
Speaker 2:Which means that when you're not in the hotspot in a hotspot coverage, you use the T-Mobile micro network. So it's just like a regular T-Mobile customer.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:When you're close to the hotspot, you connect to the hotspot.
Speaker 1:So everybody who has an interest in this right. The idea is that if you get your friends to sign up for Helium Mobile, then not only do they get to use the T-Mobile service and again that's from a features and devices perspective it's anything that will work on that equipment, right? So iPhones and Samsung Galaxies and all that other stuff still works on it. But now when they come over to your house they're going to roam under your network and you get to mine token because of it. Is that part of the marketing plan? It's like, hey, everybody should jump on this so that when you're in my house I get compensated for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there is that. But there is also the interesting play, which is, you know, places like restaurants, coffee shops, small shopping malls, small retail stores, restaurants, coffee shops, small shopping malls, small retail stores those are perfect places to place one of these hotspots because, organically, you will capture traffic from people stopping by your shop or passing by or, you know, stopping inside your area. So that is a perfect example, actually even a better example than the residential for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's well. Let me ask a question on that, then. I appreciate you letting me interrupt you. I do that from time to time. So, that being said, though, this doesn't work with just any Wi-Fi device, right Like I can't go and take a Meraki network and just go ahead and turn this on in some way, shape or form and have it start doing it. What does it take for me as an operator? So, first, the question is do we, does it work with any device? If not, what device do I need in order to support it?
Speaker 2:that is awesome and actually we recently launched what we call a brownfield initiative. What that means? It means that when we started this, like about a year ago, we launched our own devices, we can still purchase. There's a hospital that is like two, like this is the indoor version, is the outdoor version? Uh, planted, perfectly, planted on on queue, uh, and but if you happen to have a wi-fi a wi-fi rather, uh specifically, which is passpoint enabled or capable, so we're talking about prosumer.
Speaker 2:If you devices like ubiquity, aruba c, cisco, meraki, juniper, mist, and if you have those devices, you actually can follow their directions in our website to how to enable what we call this carrier-grade Wi-Fi offload, and effectively we can. In the blockchain lingo, they call it data-only hotspot. What in the blockchain lingo? They call it data-only hotspot. What a data-only hotspot is is a hotspot that earns for the amount of traffic that gets transferred over, and it differentiates from the full-blown, full-fledged healing hustle because these guys, they actually have an additional level of blockchain integration which allows them to earn even without data being passed.
Speaker 2:And this is because, without getting into any details the way you want to think about rewards in the Helium ecosystem. There are two buckets. One is what we talked about the more usage through your what we call a mini cell tower, like through your hotspot, the more you earn. But there's also this bucket which is called proof of coverage, which is the idea of if I can trust the location of a hotspot in a certain area. You actually the chain already rewards you, regardless of if there is traffic or not. So these devices above my head here earn both what we call POC proof of coverage as well as data rewards.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that's the question how much does it earn? Because there's so here's the thing. And so, with you know, there's a couple of different groups out there in the marketplace that are doing this. Now you guys were very, if not the first, maybe the first. Guys were very, if not the first, maybe the first, I'm assuming the first, yeah, yeah. But then you've got x net and you've got, you know, other little things that are popping up here and there that are doing the same thing. You all were the first to announce a big integration with, with carrier offload, and now x nets turn around and they've done that as well.
Speaker 1:And there's been rumors, there's been gossip about who's paying off what and how much you get per gig, and so on and so forth. Is that a set fee that you all reimburse via? And talk me through the token component of this. So someone comes over to my house and they download 100 gigs of data let's call it 20 gigs. Like someone, my mother-in-law comes over and she's shopping online and downloading high-resolution images of bags I don't know and she downloads. Let's say she does shopping online and downloading high resolution images of bags, I don't know and she downloads. Let's say she does 20 gigs worth of transfer on here. What does that look like to me at the end of it?
Speaker 2:So there are multiple components.
Speaker 2:I'll try to break it down in simple ones, so they actually one of the biggest differentiation I think that Helium started from the beginning long ago is this idea of like there is a community actually voting on how and then how the network functions, and there is this concept of HIP, which is the Helium Improvement Proposal, and that's where all this information about how the chain pays is set up.
Speaker 2:In the specific case of Helium, the price for the gigabyte is 50 cents a gigabyte in the States. Now does this mean that if you have those 20 gig you will get all the rewards? Then there are other discussions on the buyer side of the network that will include things like caps or per user caps or per monthly caps. That will actually change depending on which carrier utilizes the network. So I don't want to. It wouldn't be correct if I just say that all those 20 gigabits would be like 50 cents. I would say majority of the case is yes, but in general there are other rules or the data buyer of the network, which are the carriers, will apply to that to shape what is the traffic pattern.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm not going to just get 10 bucks off my mother-in-law, but possibly, possibly Now, then that you can see the difference.
Speaker 2:One thing I wanted to say is that if you head over to our Helium coverage planner, you can see actually how much. That's the other part about blockchain. Everything is transparent so you can actually see what other hospitals are earning. So you know that if you're at a restaurant in Manhattan, you can see what other restaurants in the area are actually earning deploying hospitals. So you can have an idea.
Speaker 1:So that is usually the best proxy for this type of discussion. Yeah, and it's awesome to see that because then you can actually see it, and I'm assuming there's some. In a downtown area like Manhattan versus in McAllen, texas, there's going to be a difference in the amount that's paid, whether that's up or down. I don't know. I've got to go look at it. Is it worth more in Manhattan, where it's more robust, or is it worth more in McAllen, where there's nothing? Exactly?
Speaker 2:It depends. It can be both. It can be a proposition on both ends. It can be that it helps you recover where capacity is under strain, the strain, or it can help to when there isn't enough yeah.
Speaker 1:So then the next question is then how is that paid out to me? And thank you for this is I didn't know. I didn't think we're going to do a primer on on helium, but hey, here we are right. So then, how is that? How is that paid out to me? How do I receive those funds?
Speaker 2:oh, those are, uh, right now they get paid into helium tokens, helium mobile tokens, um, so that amount gets. There is this function within the network called oracles. Those are like services that effectively translate the real world into the blockchain world, and so daily you'll get so when you onboard the hotspot, you actually connect your Helium wallet to the Helium blockchain wallet so that there is accounting that gets done on a daily basis and a daily, what they call epoch. So daily those rewards get calculated and they get sent to your wallet.
Speaker 2:So that's where you see them, and then you can claim it. You can do whatever you want and as of today, that each yeah and each token as of today, that those are in mobile healing yeah, and each token, as of today, is at five dollars and 79 cents.
Speaker 1:I just looked it up. I got a little glitchy on there. So on each one, hnt is the code for it, and on those it's it's five dollars and 79 cents per token, so you earn a fraction of the tokens, depending on how much you do, and then, uh, that's awesome, okay, so so then this is where you guys are, this is this is where it's at today. I mean, what's give me a like a current state of it, because a lot has been happening. The helium mobile launch was big. You guys, there's a stadium now named after you all, right in california, I think. I saw that.
Speaker 1:There's like a huge like uh, yeah, we have a partnership yeah, that's what we did I mean I wish there was a stadium, not really, but like we, more like we are, we are partnering with the usc, uh to trojan and to be, like you know, to be, our brand ambassador yeah, and then you guys gotta have these incredible graphics with the logos, you know, looked up, you know, blown up like helium balloons where, where are you at today and where do you think you all are going to be, without sharing too many secrets In the next three months? First, hold on, don't answer it yet. Let's talk about adoption. What does this look like from an adoption perspective?
Speaker 1:Because I remember one of the early statistics in Helium was it was the largest, it was the fastest and it was the largest fastest built network ever known to man, or something like that. There was some statistic about how quickly it grew, because you would go on the map and you would look at okay, well, is there coverage in my area? And there wasn't down here for the longest time. But then you would zoom out and you would see, oh my God, spain just like erupted, you know. So talk to me about adoption. Where are you guys at today and what does your trend on adoption look like? Is it picking up At what magnifier or multiplier? What does it look like for you guys right now?
Speaker 2:Well, so right now we have about in the United States alone. We launched about a year ago and with the hotspots, with the mobile hotspots, and we are about 20,000 units deployed and growing. We are growing at a stage acceptable, by 100, 250 a day if you look at the planner. So I'm expecting that to actually accelerate for many different reasons. One of them is that in the US in the past three months like you start mentioning what we did we actually opened up the network also to carriers. So now you have two of the three big MNOs in the country which I can name but, and a couple of them.
Speaker 1:I can name them. I can name them. It's AT&T and T-Mobile. For anyone listening, he's not confirming or denying that, but everybody knows that Verizon is not playing nice with anybody right now. Everybody knows that. So you can't say it, but I can say it.
Speaker 2:We have MNOs and we have MVNOs in the network. They use the network and so what happened is that the growth actually accelerated because of that. Actually, you can go in our website, the helloeliumcom slash stats, so you can see our stats of carrier offload for the different carriers. You can see the growth there.
Speaker 1:So that's, why.
Speaker 2:I'm saying we're going to see problem acceleration there. That's the first thing you will see. The second adoption very important for us is in Mexico. We, early this year, we announced a partnership with Telefonica, which is this gigantic operator that probably everybody knows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome, we have a brand called Movistar in Mexico, and what we did was exactly that was the idea of how can we complement their cellular coverage in specific areas. So we pointed the, we zoomed in into Mexico City, oaxaca and the community went out and built coverage, built coverage over there. So that partnership. I'm very excited to see what it's going to be.
Speaker 1:You know something along. Something with that that I love is that I live right. I don't know if you know where I live. If this is the state of Texas, I live right on the border with Mexico. Monterrey is two and a half hours away. I mean it's closer. Monterrey is closer to me than Corpus Christi and San Antonio is, and so there's a lot, you know.
Speaker 1:Half the time my phone pops up saying welcome. Half the time my phone pops up saying welcome to Mexico whenever there's a new carrier update and Movistar, it's right across the border and it doesn't know any boundaries. So for me, from an international perspective and you think about resort towns like Aspen, like Vail, like any of the big ski towns you have this huge influx of Mexican nationals that come across here to shop or to contribute trade or vacation or whatever it is. This is such a cool thing for them to be able to roam on the Helium network from one to the other without ever even thinking about it. So that whole idea or concept of an international plan now takes a different shape because of it. That deal with Telefonica and Movistar is awesome, man. Kudos to you guys on that.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, we're still in again. It wouldn't be any different. I mean, it's a staged approach, so we're excited to get into the next stage. But it's so cool to see two things. One is that you can. You mentioned something about speed and velocity. It's so interesting. Oaxaca, for the ones that don't know, is a UNESCO site protected by the UNESCO in Mexico. Beautiful old town, unesco site protected by the UNESCO in Mexico, beautiful old town. With that comes the difficulty of deploying new towers in traditional ways. So how do you augment the connectivity for mobile user in a place where you cannot put you can't even penetrate a wall or put up a tower.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way you do it, you do it this way and what we did in a matter of like again a couple of months, we had like 150 200 hospital being deployed in that stage and and now you can have there's videos on twitter of us like testing it back in april which we go around and we get like a consistent throughput of like 300 megabits as you roam around that's awesome, so awesome what you had before, which is like this this like connectivity wasn't optimal because of the limitations.
Speaker 2:So that is one use case, and I think it would be very interesting to see how it plays out in Mexico.
Speaker 1:So then the next question is from a network perspective, from what you do and what you oversee over there. Granted, there's lots that goes into the partnership agreements and whatever the contracts are with the different carriers to do that, but what does your job look like? I mean, you're overseeing those contracts. From a network perspective, tell me what you do, man. What does your day-to-day look like in your role?
Speaker 2:So day-to-day. So day-to-day. I mean, we're still a startup, so it's hard to pin one thing it depends on.
Speaker 1:what is the dumpster that is on fire?
Speaker 2:I mean, we're still a startup so it's hard to pin one thing. You're like yes, I do all of the things. It depends what is the dumpster that is on fire when you wake up. It might be that there is some Kubernetes cluster that needs to be helped. I mean not that I do that myself. We have an amazing team internally that does that. Kudos to them. But no, generally I think there is a lot of obsession current obsession to grow their usage on the network, meaning coverage is important. But the difference, one of the biggest things that we learned really quickly between IoT and mobile and Wi-Fi is that IoT is just a bigger range, so you can the coverage story. It's easier in a way because you can just cover much more with one single unit.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:With Wi-Fi it's much more targeted, so that whenever you have this hit or float deals and all that, you really want to make sure that you cover places where it matters. And so the way we try to shape that coverage, try to incentivize the right behavior. This is one of the things that I focus a lot internally to try to make sure the network grows, not just for the sake of growing, but it grows where usage can actually be met. So where is demand meets supply? That's number one. Number two is actually one of the things that we're doing and I'm not taking all the credit at all. That is Joey Padden. That is one of the best person in the entire industry and I'm biased and I'm proud to be biased to say that because it's an amazing person to have on the team.
Speaker 2:We are really trying to bring this concept of quality of service for Wi-Fi in a different spot. So we're really trying to bring this concept of quality of service for Wi-Fi in a different spot. So we're actually very active in places like the WBA to utilize this network to bubble up metrics of utilization to carriers so that now this carrier of flow is less of a blind exercise in which you lose the users once it connects to Wi-Fi and becomes more of a true converged layer with cellular, so that you actually, at real time, the carrier can design when to offload and when not to offload based on many details Not just the coverage or the capacity of their cellular macro, but also what is going to be the QoS of the Wi-Fi that you're connecting to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so being able to get those metrics upstream is awesome. I honestly did not know that you guys connecting to yeah, so being able to get those metrics upstream is awesome. I honestly did not know that you guys did that. What a cool way to increase. You know, if you've listened to the podcast, you always hear me say quality of experience. Quality of experience it's like that's what my whole life revolves around on. But being able to interpret that and understand that and report that back to the carriers so that they understand what it looks like from the client side, it's, that's incredible. That's awesome. So what? Okay, so, man, it's awesome. So then, what, like? What else do you guys have going on? I mean, this is this is today, november 2024. This is where y'all are at. What do we have to look forward to? What's going on with helium from a growth perspective? You know how and and how can we get involved if we want to get started, if anyone listening to this this wants to get started, what's the first step that they need to do?
Speaker 2:So I would say I just say we talk a lot about the growth of the network side and the usage. So definitely, if you want to get involved, I would say, if you do have access to areas where a lot of people congregate everybody has a favorite diner that it goes to every week. Everybody has a favorite diner that it goes to every week. So go talk to the owner and say, especially if you have, like, poor cellular coverage inside, because that's one of the biggest value proposition also, it's sure, there is the mining and there is, you know, there is the earning part that plays a role.
Speaker 2:But, honestly, we have so many conversations that we did a couple of case studies that probably come out soon, in which you know, as a business owner, like a restaurant, if you have poor cellular coverage indoor cellular coverage and now you have a solution like that, that actually helps. Now, just in itself, that is a huge value for the owner because you don't have to share your password. People are already directly connected. As they enter the restaurant, they can upload a picture of their food, so it puts you on the map. So, if you have any place that you know in which cellular is not great in terms of indoor and you want to fix, that's one way. Just get one of these devices. Or, if the owner already has a Passpoint enabled, like one of these prosumer devices that I mentioned before, that's one way of getting involved.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:The second wave is actually to become a subscriber, like becoming a Helium Mobile subscriber, as I say, is significant saving on your bill, on your monthly bill, and you actually get to experience this firsthand with all the greatness of our T-Mobile partnership. On top of that, you get this access to the Helium network. That's awesome. By the way, another thing that you can do. I want to mention it for a second.
Speaker 1:No, no, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Another cool feature that we have inside the Helium mobile is that when you say, when you have in front of you that map of the entire United States, sure you can take a guess of where do you think coverage will be needed the most. But one of the things that we built into the Helium mobile platform is that if subscribers decide to share their location with a Helium network, so it's an opt-in, which is already a big differentiator compared to what it's not automatically opt-in.
Speaker 2:Automatically opt-in. You have to opt-in, you have to opt-in. The moment you opt-in, you actually share the location with the Helium network. The location gets aggregated and now we have heat maps of where coverage is happening and where people are. We call this discovery mapping, so that actually the blockchain rewards you for that behavior. That's awesome. Rewards the subscriber for sharing their location information with the chain. Not only you can have the $20 a month plan, you can actually also earn mobile tokens, helping out the growth of the network.
Speaker 2:As a subscriber you can also earn potential.
Speaker 1:Well, man, that's awesome. Listen, I appreciate you taking the time. We're running up on the bottom of it here. I appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us. It's such a fun thing and I feel like for so long I felt like I was just on this little island with me and a couple of people that knew it. But then once you tap into the online communities and you get on Discord and you get on X and you start to really dive into it, you see people have deployed this absolutely everywhere. So, mario, that was awesome. I appreciate you sharing that with us.
Speaker 1:About Helium what a fun way to get started. If you're interested, just Google, look up Helium, go to Helium Mobile. If you want to subscribe to their plans, look at what they have going on. It's a phenomenal product, um, and and it helps you, you know, save a little bit of money, but at the same time, it really feels like that whole internet revolution where you're helping something get started again. So thanks for listening to the waves podcast. We'll see you next week, our next on our next episode. Until then, drop a like a subscribe, bring the little alarm, send me an email. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know. But thanks for listening to waves. Okay, that's done on the recording.
