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[00:00:10] Fergulati: And everybody, welcome back to another exciting Hashing it Out interview. Today we are joined with Mario Di Dio, the GM of Helium Mobile Network. How are you?

[00:00:24] Mario Di Dio: Hey. Very good. How are you guys? Thank you for having me here. It's great to be here.

[00:00:29] Fergulati: Thank you for being here. So before we dive into helium mobile here could you give an introduction to yourself? Where are you from? What did you do? What have you been doing? What? Late night of reading on the internet led you into crypto, or was it a was it a bar story? Where was the where's the I got into crypto story. We want to hear that.

[00:00:50] Mario Di Dio: All right, well well, now, today at Helium Mobile, I am working together with a wonderful team in to try to build what is the helium mobile network and which is the people's network facilitating that growth. We get to talk a little bit about that. Historically, I come from the telco industry actually being in both wireless and fixed network for the longest time in my career. And then about almost two years ago, I stumbled upon a colleague that I really worked really well together. And now he's working on this cool project. And definitely I was. I heard about helium before for the IoT network in 2019, but now I started to see how they started to tell me about how now they're tackling the mobile industry. And it just made sense because many of the things that we will talk about there were some of the things that we were looking at in the traditional telco industry, but it seemed that the blockchain and the crypto component attached to it really made it possible. And it sounded very, very good and very cool to to jump on. And that's and the rest is history. So now I'm part of this wonderful team trying to help building this, what I call the the next generation of mobile networks, which I truly believe that come from a deepin. That's how they the space I've learned to be called. But it's pretty cool.

[00:02:13] Dr Petty: I think it's funny that, like, the potential success of this, of this network is literally the trope of you work in telcos, you want to do telcos plus blockchain, and that that may end up being actually one of the few things that works like

[00:02:28] Dr Petty: The longest proliferation of blockchain has been like, hey, let's just do this with blockchain. It's like, that's not a good idea. Whereas like maybe through this conversation we'll learn that it is. But to get some context for our users, can you kind of differentiate between, like helium is used in a bunch of different ways. If you use like Google search helium, you're going to get a bunch of different things.

[00:02:47] Dr Petty: Can you kind of differentiate those things and where or where Helium Mobile stands on that?

[00:02:52] Mario Di Dio: Yeah. Absolutely. Happy to do so. So yeah. So helium actually you're right. That is when you search about helium here, you, you know, you get a lot of results. And the first one that you'll see is that helium as a helium started around 2013. And, and it started as this idea from Amir Saleem, our CEO, and a few others inside the company that it was possible to create the biggest decentralized wireless network. Say that like that. It sounds like a huge undertaking. And it is. And and the medium to get to that, at least when they started in 2018 and 2019 was IoT, IoT. So internet of things. So a much more a network which is, you know, meant to drive usage of, you know, sensor data and whatnot. And they did that. So that's the first incarnation of helium. Is this this IoT network that grew to the point of having more than 1 million hotspots deployed globally and is indeed the biggest even today is like is, I think I would say is probably the largest, likely the largest, still the largest IoT network in the world. And all this was done in a decentralized way. So that again, the concept behind is to use blockchain as an incentive mechanism for people to deploy coverage as opposed to a centralized way where, you know, a service provider, let's say, or someone that wants to build a service just does a bunch of expenditures and buys a bunch of equipment and deploys the network themselves. So that was helium watercolor 1.0.

[00:04:29] Mario Di Dio: I don't know if you want to go into definition, but after that and during that that it was pretty clear that this was just the first network and, and the second network that came around was the mobile network. And that's what I would like to do, a differentiation because, you know, we will talk about Helium Mobile, the actual company that is called Nova Labs. And then there is a helium. So actually the helium network, because it's in decentralized, is what we call a people network. So it's owned by the people, owned by the many. So we at Nova Labs or Helium Mobile, we don't own the network. All the people that deploy hotspots on the network. So when you say the category like helium network, is this network owned by many, the governance of that network is also made by the people. There is a community that votes on how the network should go and what are the things that the network should include. And there is this process called hip helium improvement Proposal, that everyone that is part of the community can contribute to, decide where the network will go and the entity that governs the community, the shepherds, and make sure that everything is it follows rules. And we're known as the Healing Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization. So this is what the helium Network is. And it was also for IoT. And Then that network decided that mobile was going to be the second network to tackle, and they created a Subdial, which is a mobile subdial within within the the helium network, which is the the mobile network.

[00:06:05] Mario Di Dio: Now helium Mobile is. And the company that I work for which is Nova labs, we create services and hardware for the helium network. So what does it mean? It means that we have a service offering which is Helium Mobile, which is a cell phone plan, a cell in a very simple way, which is not a simple I would love to go into details, is is basically a mobile subscription plan that you can purchase. Is actually the cheapest unlimited data plan in the US. For $20 a month. You get unlimited text calls and data. And then we have hardware, also hardware devices that are called helium mobile hotspots that can be purchased by anybody and deployed by anybody. And once they get deployed there, they join the helium network. So this is the differentiation. There's a lot of helium word, but there is like the helium network and the community, the helium foundation that governs that community. And then there is a services like Helium Mobile and devices like helium mobile hotspots. And this is just part of the community in the future. And there is already some examples actually there might be there are already other people using the network and other we as a Nova Labs and Helium mobile. We are part of the community. We are a member of that community. So I don't know if that clarifies a little bit.

[00:07:28] Mario Di Dio: But it's it's very exciting because like I always said, being part of the community and having all these processes, they actually help us to they always keep us on our toes for the good reasons. And we as a member of the community, we contribute to a lot of the improvement, but there is a lot of improvement proposal that come from the community. And and it's great that it's it's a very interesting and very virtuous cycle that you, me at least coming from the traditional telco world, when it's a very top, bottom approach, is is at the beginning, it can be a little off setting if you come like me, new to the to the to the to the space. But you shouldn't should enough. You see the how the alignment drives to faster results, faster delivery, and eventually what I think will be one of the one of the biggest wireless revolution in play.

[00:08:26] Jessie Broke: It's it's pretty clear to me that one of the layers that needs to be improved on in this, in this industry as a whole, is kind of the networking layer. So there's a lot of, you know, incumbents in the kind of tier one telco infrastructure playpen. And it's nice. It's always nice to see, you know, projects trying to disrupt that level of kind of permanence that they have, I guess. That said, you know, I have some basic needs that you know, if I run node infrastructure for different projects some that have high bandwidth requirements, I, I'm actually currently looking at separating the home network needs from, you know, a more dedicated service that serves those kind of nodes that I run. So in that vein, maybe you could talk a little bit about the technical details in terms of the performance of the helium hotspots. And, you know, maybe the price points that you guys offer different data plans, you know, egress any sort of limits you guys might have. And then we can take it from there.

[00:09:35] Mario Di Dio: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to get into that. So let's start from the from the plan, the helium mobile plan. So as I mentioned before, the helium mobile plan is a subscription plan that anybody can can purchase for $20 a month for unlimited text calls and data. This is the plan that we launched in partnership in collaboration with T-Mobile. What does this mean? It means that the Helium Mobile subscribers not only will have the access to the largest 5G network in the country, but wherever there is also the coverage of helium, mobile hotspots of helium network will automatically join that network and start using that network. It's a very simple, easy setup process. It's you can get up and running in minutes and through our website, you can get your subscription and you can port your number. You can use it as a secondary theme if you want. We have a concierge service that actually helps you port the number in case you are skeptical, or you want to have a little more hand-holding needed for that porting. So it's really it's really good. As part of, as I was mentioning now on the helium mobile hotspot site. So those Helium Mobile subscribers will have access to the largest 5G network and the helium network. The helium mobile hotspots instead are hardware devices. We have two we have two SKUs, two devices. One is an indoor device, the other one is an outdoor device. And what they effectively do, they create a network when when they are fully set up and onboarded. The you ask about the price point. So the price point of the indoor is 242 49 and the outdoor is 499. And once they get set up they will start providing coverage for the helium mobile subscriber. But not just for that.

[00:11:30] Mario Di Dio: In general, there is a device because that belongs to the helium network. They will will create coverage to whoever service provider is using the network. Right now. The helium mobile subscriber is one of the service providers using the network, and I hope we will get to talk about some of the nodes. They are trialing the network as we speak, so in the in the near future, the same device will actually for provide access to both to to helium mobile subs as well as as well as any other carrier, Nomos network operator or virtual network operator that will decide to join to join the network. Technically, if you want to get to one level, one peel one layer of the onion, we use a technology called Wi-Fi Passpoint or Wi-Fi Carrier Offload without getting too into the nitty gritty details, but is a technology that allows phones to automatically connect to a network and disconnect to a network without the user doing anything. So as you enter the coverage area or one of a Helio mobile hotspot, you will be automatically connected. And then as you exit the coverage area, you get disconnected. You don't even notice that as a customer. And that's great because it allows you to be to have free. It allows to add more coverage without the user having to do anything. I don't know, I'm sure that we're all very familiar with the what's the password type of situation at the coffee shop. Well, there is there is no need for that. That is all part of this like beautiful technology stack that we, that we are using. And, and so this is when it comes to technical details. That's how that's how the technology is on both sides of the supply and demand, if you wish.

[00:13:15] Dr Petty: It's that answers. One of my original questions was like the bootstrapping issue. And the partnership with with T-Mobile is certainly like helps you ensure continuous coverage in areas that don't necessarily have coverage from the the mobile devices themselves. But the obvious question from there would be like, why would I even want to be? What do I get for being on the helium mobile network that I wouldn't get from T-Mobile?

[00:13:43] Mario Di Dio: That's great. Well, first of all, yes. And the answer is and now we I think we get into less than the technical details of a lot to get it more into, like, what do I get? Why would I participate into this

[00:13:57] Mario Di Dio: From a subscriber perspective? As I say, the blockchain, the incentive model is what fuels everything. So let's tackle this on both sides. So for a Helium mobile subscriber, if you are a helium mobile subscriber, you can actually decide to opt in into into what we call discovery mapping. What discovery mapping is, is you as a user, you decide to share your location information with us. Now, this is something that has been done already by the telco industry at large. And you know, without naming names or search entity, you can just do a quick Google search to see how controversial it is. In a way, in many ways, the fact that providers used your location data to do their own thing. In our service, you have to explicitly opt in to share your location, but once you do so, you participate into the network. Build out. Why? Because as you share your location in this almost gamification, if you want to say called discovery mapping, as you walk around your own day, you keep basically sending us information of where you are or what kind of network do you see that helps the network to understand where coverage is needed and what is needed the most. So you're like contributed to create a heat maps like a live heat maps of where coverage gaps are. And for that the blockchain actually that is that is a rewards mechanism in place for people that opt in and discovery mapping. And they qualify, they actually get rewarded for into into in mobile tokens daily on a daily basis.

[00:15:32] Mario Di Dio: So that's for the subscriber side on the network side. You for the for the work that you do to deploy a hotspot and to provide coverage. You you are basically according to all the rules of the network, as I say, that probably will not go into many details at the moment, but you effectively are eligible to have rewards rewards for two type of buckets, one bucket, which is called the proof of coverage, which is a pool within the rewards pool that will allocate to to folks that deploy the unit regardless of if data transfer data has been transferred or not. And so there is some there is some eligibility criteria. So you you do have to have a good connection internet connection, a stable internet connection. So that is an eligibility criteria that allows some quality of service on the network. So if you pass the eligibility criteria and you are in a herb dense area, So there is there is a there is some rules that I wouldn't invite anybody to go on the website to discover that you get eligible for proof of coverage rewards. And then there is a separate bucket, which is the data rewards bucket, which means that every time a helium mobile subscriber or in the future, one of the carriers that will use the network utilizes your. It's connected to your helium mobile hotspot.

[00:16:56] Mario Di Dio: Usually you get a proportional amount of mobile mobile tokens in mobile tokens to to your wallet that is connected to the hotspot. So this is kind of like the two, the two sides of the of the equation, how they work and why would you do something like that. And and and I don't want, I want to elevate a little bit because of course there is a wire connected to the token and all that. But in reality there is a I think there is also why about you can provide coverage where there wasn't before. You can literally install a helium mobile hotspot when your phone didn't didn't have service. And now every person in your community that is a highly mobile service and I will have service. So there is an aspect also a really big aspect of community building. And included with that. And on the subscriber side, this idea of location, the fact that you are now part of a community that is helping each other out into building a network, I think that's a very cool concept that we that you don't see that very often, how much we have a lot of engagement from our subscriber base and because, of course, because of Discovery Market, of course, because of the rewards connected to it, but also because it really feels you're part of a bigger story and not just a subscription plan that you get together with your water bill and your electricity bill.

[00:18:16] Fergulati: Okay. I want to ask the hard hitting questions here. You've been in telco for 15 years now. Why is my cell phone bill going up every year?

[00:18:29] Fergulati: Wants to know. Tell the people.

[00:18:32] Mario Di Dio: Well, traditionally. And this so-called for someone that maybe they know, maybe they don't. Traditionally, the way the model works is that if you want to offer a service like a mobile service, which is one of the most expensive thing to do, especially in the US, you have to acquire a bunch of stuff. You have to acquire raDio frequencies, spectrum from the government. And those are billions of dollars of of auctions. You have to acquire sites, so you have to get access to a top of a hill. It's very steep. It's very costly to get up there. You need to get internet to the top of the hill. You have to build tower. You need to you need to buy raDios that go on top of the tower. You have to maintain those raDios. And even into that was like the traditional model even ten years ago when this what they call this macro cells, like it's very big areas of coverage. Now, even in today's world, when you see more of those a city, you can probably walk your downtown. You see those like smaller cell towers. Sometimes they are, like, camouflaged with urban architecture. Even that is very costly because you have to have full access internet again, raDio, internet, all in all, contributed to a very big capital expenditures and operational costs for creating and operating the network. For those reasons, of course, if you're offering a service, then the only way for you to recapture, recoup, and make a profitable business out of it is increasing pricing to access that network. And the evolution of the GPRS from 3G to 4G to 5G. Sprinkle a little bit of inflation on top of that is contributing to the cost rise. And because equipment is more costly, technology advances, but the cost of that technology is higher. And so yeah, so that the reason the simple reason is that

[00:20:23] Mario Di Dio: It's much, much more expensive to create services and and that in turn will go. Will go. You know, it trickles down to the cost of the cost of the plan. So that's why Helium Mobile, we say $20 a month. Why can we do that? How why would why would we be able to do that? Well, because instead, on the other end, if you decentralize this model, you get you get everybody to own a piece of the telco pie. Now, the cost of serving. The cost of serving it becomes, it becomes is lower. And then in turn, allow allows some people like helium Mobile and hopefully other providers that join the network to lower their price because their cost to serve is lower. So. And and that's why I still think also philosophically, if you look at the industry as a whole, we have a lot of capacity that goes into into the wired network. The fiber cable, all of us that have hundreds of megabits at our homes and residential homes and businesses and that capacity sometimes just get used just by the people that own the business or the people that own the residences, blah, blah, blah. So technologies like this one allows for that capacity to surface as a wireless connectivity and, and that because there's so much of it that is connected to a lower cost for serving, you're just creating a medium to make that connectivity surface. And so that's why we can get to those $20 a month.

[00:22:02] Fergulati: That's the answer I'm looking for when I talk to the people that sent me my bill every month. They don't ever tell me that.

[00:22:09] Dr Petty: I guess that you can't. I think you started explaining it there, and it's something that's always eluded me, especially with projects like this in the past. Why would incumbents want to partner with you? Like whether it's traditionally difficult technically and from a business standpoint, integrating with these telcos. Why do they care what you're doing and want to partner with you? And also like, can you talk about some of the difficulties you experienced in integrating with a system like that?

[00:22:37] Mario Di Dio: Yeah, absolutely. I can tackle both. So for the first one is I think that there is, there is, there was this myth, especially going from 3G to 4G and to from 4G to 5G, that this the cost of running the network will actually go down because there is more efficiency in the raDio. The raDios today are better equipment than ten years ago. The truth is, that is the fact that updating the network is a very manual process and is very costly. And now if if you look at the balance sheet of all those major companies, there is a lot of there is a lot of debt and the level of leverage is pretty high and was the only way for them to be able to build the network. So I think now the time has come. I'm pretty sure that many people in those companies, if you start talking about six G, there's they are rolling their eyes because

[00:23:31] Mario Di Dio: They just don't have any way to get there. And I know it might be a little news, whatever news, flashy, whatever you want to call it. But I think this is the six G. It's more it's less of a, it's less of a technology disruption. It's more like, let's change the model in which things are being built. And why would they do that is because of necessity. Because the truth is that the busses started is coming to an end. That is I mean, there is not an infinite pool of money that you can access to. And a certain point, those investments, it just doesn't make sense. And another thing that is important, the advancement of technology from 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G has shorter, the cycle is shorter.

[00:24:12] Mario Di Dio: So not only is getting more expensive, those companies have been asked to update their equipment more often, which is even more costly than it was. Like we're talking about 5G was like two years old at this point in production. And they were already talking about six G next year or something like that. So it's like it's it's unsustainable. The model is unsustainable. And so I'm not saying that we are on the great adoption scale at this point. I've talked about the challenges in a in a second, but we definitely have interest from those companies because there is there is a need and and there is and and I think also there is a realization that the old way cannot be the only way. So now you can see, for example, many companies in the US, they announced partnerships with satellite companies. And so you start to see this play of rather than I own my own network, I start to partner with different companies to create a connectivity layer so that my user is taken care of, regardless of if it is my own network is the network of my partners. The satellite network is the helium network is serving. It's more of a what they call in the industry convergence, a network convergence that is starting to happen out of necessity, but also because the benefits are there, because if you have to share the same cell site with with 20,000 users in in Manhattan, it's the quality that you will give. It will definitely can be lower than having many different hospitals serving high, higher speed off of this wired wire network. And so it's even a better connection.

[00:25:54] Mario Di Dio: So it's an even better for them now. Is it going to happen overnight? I don't think so. And so going back to the second part, the challenge is so the challenge is, is is convincing through and through all those all those carriers and service providers, service providers at large, that the quality is the same, that they can count on the network because they are they have they have done planning and operation for years. So they own their own network. They know how to plan it. They know how to operate. They know how to. They know how it performs night and day. So the more we can open up the network for visibility in terms of performance, quality of service, things like uptime, service, reliability, the more we create metrics that can make them sleep well at night when they partner with a decentralized network, the faster the integration is. So the challenge is to make them understand that there is that those metrics are possible, even in a decentralized world. Why? Again, going back to the blockchain model and the incentive model, if you don't have that, then in other words, the rewards are aligned for the behavior that we want for quality of services. If you don't have that, then the rewards will be lower. So everybody will try to get a stable internet connection. Because if you don't have a stable interconnection, then the eligibility criteria will fall through. So I think that's that's the biggest challenge is that operational piece. I think the CapEx piece is actually pretty easy to understand, but why would I trust a decentralized network, and how can we

[00:27:30] Mario Di Dio: Export as much metrics as possible? That's that's the that's the biggest challenge and where we have to work on collectively as a community.

[00:27:39] Dr Petty: So it's basically repeat that back to you in a different set of words. You're effectively getting users to join the infrastructure which load balances a good portion of the connections, especially in high density areas like you're expanding the connection infrastructure so that it's not saturated. And then when they on the other side of that, when they say like, why would we even trust you? We have incentives for these users to actually continue to provide a certain service level agreement.

[00:28:09] Mario Di Dio: Yeah. Exactly. So the incentives are aligned. So that and so that they operationally they can trust and and the network. And that's also the good part about the the transparency of the blockchain. You know, everybody loves the blockchain because it's transparent. It's immutable. You know the ledger the very goes back to the basics of blockchain. Well all those quality measures that are actually on the in our blockchain in the in the blockchain of the helium network, they are public. So you can see every hotspot. What is the backhaul connection is a qualifying with low latency. So they can basically they can have a bird's eye view of the entire network as if it was theirs, quote unquote, as if they do in their own network. It's not like a black hole that they trust with.

[00:28:50] Mario Di Dio: Like, let's hope that everything works out.

[00:28:54] Dr Petty: That's interesting. Kind of like connection speeds. Can I get

[00:28:59] Dr Petty: Like to say like like right now I can get a T-Mobile hotspot here and get, like, a 400 down or something like that. A

Hosts- Dee Ferguson, Corey Petty & Jessie Santiago

In the interview with Mario Di Dio, GM of Network at Nova Labs, he discusses his background in the telco industry and his transition to Helium Mobile, where he is working to build a decentralized mobile network.  He describes Helium Mobile as a cost-effective, community-driven wireless service that enables users to participate in network expansion through blockchain technology, using hotspots to provide additional coverage.  Di Dio emphasizes the simplicity of setting up Helium mobile hotspots and the incentives for users who contribute to the network, as well as the challenge of convincing traditional telco providers of the quality and reliability of a decentralized network. 

<p>Hashing It Out is a highly-technical bi-weekly show that brings you the pioneering developers driving the Cypherpunk movement. In each show we take a deep dive through privacy, sovereignty, and network state technology with some of web3's most influential innovators.</p><section class="footnotes-container">&nbsp;</section>

Hashing It Out is a highly-technical bi-weekly show that brings you the pioneering developers driving the Cypherpunk movement. In each show we take a deep dive through privacy, sovereignty, and network state technology with some of web3's most influential innovators.

Dr. Corey Petty

Jessie Santiago

Demetrick Ferguson

Hashing It Out

<p>In the interview with <a href="https://twitter.com/didiomario">Mario Di Dio</a>, GM of Network at Nova Labs, he discusses his background in the telco industry and his transition to <a href=" https://hellohelium.com">Helium Mobile</a>, where he is working to build a decentralized mobile network.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>He describes Helium Mobile as a cost-effective, community-driven wireless service that enables users to participate in network expansion through blockchain technology, using hotspots to provide additional coverage.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Di Dio emphasizes the simplicity of setting up Helium mobile hotspots and the incentives for users who contribute to the network, as well as the challenge of convincing traditional telco providers of the quality and reliability of a decentralized network.&nbsp;</p><section class="footnotes-container">&nbsp;</section>