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Helium Mobile is a pioneer in the decentralized (DeWi) wireless space
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Wireless carriers routinely offer family plans or bundles
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Helium Mobile took notice and is offering its own version of the family plan for $20/line
Helium Mobile, which in some circles may be considered the hippest of the hip, is catching up with its old-school rivals by offering group plans.
Helium Mobile today launched monthly group plans with unlimited talk, text and data for $20/line. Billing is handled by one member of the group, which can be composed of family and/or friends who agree to share the cell phone bill.
Last year, Helium Mobile rolled out a $20/month individual plan across the country to democratize access to cell coverage. But that didn’t address something many people have grown accustomed to. “I didn’t realize just how many people were on group plans or how in demand that feature was,” Helium Mobile CEO Amir Haleem told Fierce.
Today Helium Mobile launched group plans to serve groups of up to eight people with the same $20/line rate. Business plans also are available for groups of more than eight people.
Hybrid MVNO model
Helium Mobile’s business model is far different than any of the Big 3 wireless carriers. It’s part of the decentralized wireless (DeWi) movement, where community members are helping to build the network by buying an indoor or outdoor hotspot and installing on their premises. Members of the community are rewarded with tokens based on usage of their access points.
Of course, this model also means its network is tiny compared to the bigger rivals. That’s why Helium struck a hybrid MVNO deal with T-Mobile in 2022. Whenever a Helium Mobile customer loses Helium coverage, they hop onto T-Mobile’s 5G network, which is to say – most of the time.
But as Helium’s network grows, it relies less and less on T-Mobile’s network, thereby improving its metrics. Ideally, Helium’s network builders will set up a hotspot in places where there are a lot of “slow-moving” people, like strip malls, hotels or airports, Haleem said. They can set a hotspot up in a home, but that isn’t as useful given the idea is to serve as many people as possible.
Rebels & capitalists
If pressed to describe the types of people who want to try the Helium network, Haleem points to three main buckets:
- The telco “anarchists” who hate the incumbent operators and will do anything to participate in their downfall.
- Pure capitalists who are in it to earn tokens and hope for the best.
- People looking for a good deal. Helium says its business plan, for example, can save an enterprise up to 50%.
To some degree, Helium also appeals to people who want to help their community build coverage in underserved areas, he said.
Helium operates both Wi-Fi and 3.5 GHz Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) networks. With CBRS, “I’m thrilled that we have access to it, but it’s much more complicated to take advantage of,” he said.
Phones are very good at knowing when to switch from a cellular network to a Wi-Fi network, but not so much when it comes to switching from a macro network to CBRS – the devices just aren’t there yet, he said. “That’s a work in progress,” he said, noting that both Apple and Google have made some advances.
“I’m optimistic that as time goes on that we’ll see phones be able to behave in the same way they do for Wi-Fi but for private or CBRS networks,” he said. “We’re just not there yet.”
Interestingly, Helium Mobile, through Nova Labs, struck a deal with Telefonica whereby the giant telecom service provider is using Helium mobile hotspots to extend coverage in parts of Mexico.
It’s based on the OpenWifi standard developed by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and enables Movistar customers to access the Helium Mobile network using their Movistar SIM cards for authentication. Thus far implemented on a limited basis, the arrangement looks promising for reducing telecom infrastructure costs with minimal environmental impact.
Growth prospects
According to the crypto website Dune, the Helium Mobile network today serves 87,167 NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Although that number may not necessarily reflect active subscribers, it's impressive for a startup that just launched a national plan late last year.
How big does Helium Mobile expect to get? As big as the biggest in wireless?
Haleem’s answer is, thankfully, grounded. Practically speaking, it’s really hard to build macro networks without licensed spectrum.
“I want to give you the answer that we’ll be the biggest, but I’m not sure I believe it. We are limited to operating in unlicensed bands,” whether that’s 2.4, 5, 6 for Wi-Fi or 3.5 GHz CBRS – and CBRS has power limits.
“It’s a very uphill battle,” he said. However, as a majority of cellular traffic is occurring indoors these days, that represents an opportunity. It’s not so much about building giant macro towers outdoors as it is about installing small cells.
Rather than focusing on square miles, “we can focus on people and volumes of data moved,” and Helium is in a strong place to do that, he said.