![]() Haleem explained that Helium is dealing with the limitations of operating in unlicensed spectrum, admitting that the hotspots could never be able to compete with cell towers. An August report from PCMag critiqued the hotspots’ tech-powered by the Nova Labs-owned software company FreedomFi-questioning whether it could scale. Currently, there are only around 5,000 Helium Mobile hotspots operational, and over two-thirds of them are “indoor radios,” meaning they would have questionable reception outside the buildings they’re housed in. The hotspots are priced around $2,000 to $3,000. The principal challenge, of course, is coverage-for a cellular network to work, it can’t be patchwork. The major difference is that the major clients for the network will not be IoT companies, but everyday mobile users. The project has echoes of the IoT network, with people setting up hotspots in their homes or other locations and mining a crypto token as a reward. “We are now moving into a phase where we will focus ourselves in the form of revenue,” he said. For IoT companies looking for consistent data transfer, Helium wouldn’t offer the most reliable service. For one, he explained, because the network relies on a decentralized network of hotspots, it will always be patchwork. Weaver, the Berkeley researcher, expressed skepticism that such an IoT network could attract enough companies to be sustainable. $1,151.07 Helium data credit revenue from IoT device demand over the past 30 days Source: Helium Foundation He declined to estimate how many devices are currently using the network. “There’s no other way to slice the answer to that question other than there has to be a lot of traffic.” “For Helium to succeed over a decade-long window on the IoT network, there have to be hundreds of millions of devices using the network globally,” he said. In an interview with Fortune, Haleem, Helium's CEO, explained that the IoT network is still in its infancy. As Fortune found, only around $1,150 generated in the last month came from actual data transfers. Even so, most of the revenue is from other fees, such as onboarding new devices. Today, Mong said that Helium has hundreds of clients who are using the network. (Nova Labs COO Frank Mong told Fortune that Helium had a pilot with Lime.) Helium touted major clients like the electric scooter company Lime as using the network, although Lime later denied working with Helium beyond an initial test. IoT could transfer data across the network through “data credits,” which were used to buy HNT. He would later apply elements of that transaction model to his own business.Įven as the network spread across the U.S.-and the world-through people setting up devices, its capabilities didn’t make much sense from an economic standpoint. Gold’s first miner came from a company called Emrit, which sent him a free hotspot in exchange for 80% of the earnings. This allowed secondary markets to proliferate. “I think from perspective, they didn’t want to come off as, ‘We’re doing all the manufacturing and selling you these overpriced Raspberry Pis that mine our token,’” Gold said. Rather than producing the devices themselves, Helium relied on third-party manufacturers, resulting in varying degrees of quality and longer fulfillment times. Its decentralized IoT-focused network launched in 2019.Ī Forbes investigation published this month found that Helium insiders profited handsomely from the early days of the network, setting up hotspots and mining half of all Helium tokens during the first three months-a practice common among blockchain projects, albeit contradictory to the principles of decentralization.Ĭonsumers like Gold also rushed into the project, buying up approximately $500 million worth of hotspots. Despite funding from major investors such as Khosla Ventures, the company struggled to find a foothold and was hemorrhaging cash before pivoting to crypto in 2017. “They need to keep the grift going.” ‘The People’s Network’Īmir Haleem, a game designer, started Helium with the Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning in 2013. “They’ve been trying to keep the scam going by doing a shift to a model where it’s cellular connectivity, because people can understand that better,” he said. For critics like Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute, Helium Mobile isn’t a new attempt to create a decentralized wireless network, but a distraction. ![]() The question, as Nova Labs pushes into 5G, is whether the company can pull off an ambitious, new project while its other is mired in turmoil. After hinting at building a 5G network last year and acquiring hardware companies, Helium announced it would be launching a separate mobile network in June, powered by a different type of hotspot and a new crypto token called MOBILE. With miners’ profits and installations tanking, Nova Labs is now attempting a second act.
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