Q&A Summary.

Can you start by telling us how Helium Foundation and Nova Labs are related? There seems to be some confusion about whether they are separate entities or if Helium was rebranded as Nova Labs.

Helium was originally a company with a proprietary protocol called LongFi, which was used to build an IoT network. However, Helium Inc. eventually handed the intellectual property (IP) of their network to the Helium Foundation, which was previously known as the Decentralized Wireless Alliance.

The Foundation's primary focus is on the advocacy and development of the decentralized wireless network, while Helium Inc. rebranded itself as Nova Labs. Nova Labs is now responsible for building and maintaining the mobile carrier network and other elements of the IoT infrastructure.

In short, the Helium Foundation oversees the governance and protocol, while Nova Labs handles the operational side of the technology stack.

Could you explain the technical stack behind Helium's network and the role of blockchain in this setup?

At its core, Helium’s network utilizes the LoRaWAN protocol to provide long-range connectivity for IoT devices. Initially, Helium used a proprietary protocol called LongFi, but recognizing the established ecosystem of LoRaWAN, they decided to integrate that into their network, allowing for a smoother experience and leveraging existing devices. Helium's blockchain component comes in as a means to incentivize users to build and operate the network. The network consists of thousands of small gateways, and individuals can set up these gateways at home to provide coverage. In return, they are rewarded with Helium tokens, which is the cryptocurrency of the network. Blockchain serves as the mechanism to ensure transparency, fairness, and security in the reward distribution system. Furthermore, blockchain is used to manage network rules and coverage protocols, preventing over-concentration in dense urban areas.

What are some common misconceptions about Helium's use of blockchain? Why is it such a core component of the network?

Many people associate blockchain with volatility or purely financial applications, but for Helium blockchain is a foundational element to make decentralized IoT networks feasible. The blockchain provides a system to verify the coverage provided by individual gateways through a mechanism called Proof of Coverage. Without blockchain, there would be no way to verify that the nodes are delivering actual value to the network, such as transmitting data from devices or providing coverage in underserved areas. It’s not just about rewarding nodes for participation but also ensuring that they are genuinely helping to extend network coverage. This is what enables the network to scale efficiently while remaining decentralized and secure.

Can you walk us through what a typical Helium gateway looks like and how it contributes to the network? How does the incentive structure work for individuals setting up these gateways?

A typical Helium gateway is a relatively simple piece of hardware, usually an eight-channel LoRaWAN gateway that can be purchased from companies like RAKwireless or Kerlink. These gateways are designed to be plug-and-play, allowing anyone to set them up and start contributing to the network. When a user sets up a Helium gateway, it automatically starts to transmit data, helping extend the network's coverage. The incentive for doing so comes in the form of Helium tokens, which are awarded based on the coverage provided and the amount of data transmitted through the gateway. The more gateways in an area, the more dense the coverage becomes, but as the network reaches saturation in certain areas, the rewards diminish to prevent abuse. This decentralized model ensures that the network expands organically, without overbuilding in any particular region.

What is the philosophy behind Helium’s incentive structure, and how does it differ from the typical model of IoT networks or cellular networks?

The key difference between Helium's network and traditional IoT or cellular networks lies in its decentralized nature. In traditional networks, infrastructure is usually owned and operated by a central entity. In contrast, Helium allows individuals and businesses to own and operate the network, which helps keep costs lower and encourages broader participation. The incentive structure is built around the idea that anyone can contribute to the network by setting up a gateway, and in return, they are rewarded with cryptocurrency. This model lowers entry barriers for individuals and businesses and makes the network more resilient and scalable. It also reduces the reliance on centralized infrastructure, making the network more secure and resistant to failures.

How do you see the Helium network expanding, especially into rural or underserved areas where connectivity can be challenging to achieve? Are there any incentives in place for people to install gateways in these regions?

Expanding Helium's network into rural and underserved areas presents unique challenges, primarily due to the lower population density and the higher costs associated with infrastructure setup.

However, the Helium Foundation is focused on solving these issues by providing additional incentives for gateway owners in these areas. For example, remote areas where cellular coverage is sparse present an opportunity for IoT solutions to provide coverage, which can then be extended to critical infrastructure such as agricultural sensors or environmental monitoring. As more individuals or companies in these regions set up gateways, Helium can begin to create a more robust network in areas that have historically been underserved by traditional connectivity providers.

What are some of the real-world use cases for Helium, and where do you see the greatest potential for the technology in the future?

Helium's network is already supporting a wide range of use cases, primarily in the IoT sector. Some of the most common applications include smart water metering, smart agriculture, and environmental monitoring.

For example, in urban areas, the network is being used to track the movement of assets like bikes, vehicles, and other consumer goods, as well as provide data for smart city solutions. One of the most exciting use cases is in rural and remote areas where traditional connectivity options are limited, such as tracking livestock or providing connectivity for sensors in agriculture. Looking to the future, the greatest potential for Helium lies in its ability to power a new wave of IoT applications that require low-bandwidth but wide-reaching connectivity. As the network continues to grow and more devices become connected, the scalability of Helium's model could make it a key player in the global IoT ecosystem.

Where do you see the future of decentralized networks and IoT heading, and what role do you think Helium will play in that evolution?

The future of decentralized networks is incredibly exciting, and Helium is poised to play a key role in that evolution. As more industries and applications rely on IoT, the need for affordable, reliable, and scalable connectivity will only grow.

Decentralized networks like Helium are uniquely positioned to meet that demand by providing a more sustainable and cost-effective solution compared to traditional models. In the future, I believe we’ll see even more widespread adoption of IoT across various industries, from agriculture and logistics to smart cities and environmental monitoring. Helium’s model of incentivizing individuals to build and maintain infrastructure will continue to be a driving force behind the network’s expansion, offering a powerful alternative to centralized control while helping to democratize IoT connectivity across the globe.

How has the Helium network evolved in terms of business model innovation?

One of the most fascinating developments has been the emergence of device pricing models that incorporate connectivity costs directly. Rather than charging users separately for network usage, devices are sold with predictable data transfer costs baked in. For example, on Helium, you can send 100,000 messages for just $1. This equates to a message every five minutes for an entire year. This predictability has enabled businesses to build simple, scalable models, particularly for low-cost IoT devices.

We’ve seen this model applied to smart cars, scooters, and increasingly within IoT for community applications like cold chain monitoring in community kitchens.

Another approach has been giving away sensors to incentivize gateway deployments. This helps build coverage while addressing practical needs, such as ensuring refrigerators in community kitchens maintain safe temperatures. In addition, some operators simply mark up Helium's base price by a multiple and manage the infrastructure on behalf of users. Full-service managed offerings are also on the rise, where end users may not even realize they're using Helium under the hood.

Who are the main users building on Helium today, and what industries are seeing the most traction?

Today, managed services are driving a large portion of network growth. Larger LPWAN companies are increasingly roaming onto Helium to expand their service coverage, leveraging Helium’s decentralized infrastructure. This creates an interesting dynamic where companies manage the end-to-end solution—devices, dashboards, connectivity—capturing more value across the value chain.

Simultaneously, we're seeing a wave of direct deployments: vehicle asset trackers, weather stations, and other IoT devices built directly atop the network. With over 300,000 gateways already deployed, businesses can often rely on existing coverage or easily fill gaps with a dozen or so additional gateways. The ease of deploying gateways—with prices dropping to between $100 and $250—has made network expansion accessible for even modest budgets.

Given the existing footprint, how extensive is Helium’s global coverage today?

Coverage varies by country, but North America and Europe have developed significant density. Depending on the country, between 50% and 90% of the population lives within one kilometer of a Helium gateway. Importantly, LoRaWAN technology often extends well beyond a one-kilometer radius, so our estimates are conservative.

We're working on a project to precisely map coverage—analyzing every gateway’s footprint and overlaying it onto population data—to get an exact view of who and what is covered. This will support better decision-making for users and further investments in filling coverage gaps.

With such relatively low infrastructure costs, why hasn't a company invested heavily to blanket the world with Helium gateways?

It’s an enticing idea—spend $100 million to deploy a million gateways and create near-universal coverage. But Helium's pricing model, designed to make data transfer orders of magnitude cheaper than traditional networks, complicates the business case for commercial telcos. A company spending $100 million would need to ensure $500 million or more in revenue to justify the investment.

Helium’s decentralized model, where everyone pays the same minimal rates to access the network, contrasts sharply with traditional telco economics. Unless a company has a specific use case that urgently requires global coverage, building a Helium-dominant network purely for profit doesn't currently align with standard commercial return expectations.

How crucial is blockchain technology to Helium’s operations and vision?

Blockchain is foundational. At its simplest, blockchain enables direct, granular payments for network activity—for example, rewarding a gateway owner for a single data transfer. Traditional financial systems can't handle microtransactions at that scale or frequency.

Beyond payments, blockchain underpins decentralized governance, device management, and proof-of-coverage validations. It ensures resilience—no single entity controls the network, making it resistant to unilateral shutdowns or manipulations. Users can trust that the infrastructure they depend on won't disappear or be controlled by a single party, an essential property for a network intended for critical applications.

How is the Helium Foundation positioned within the network’s ecosystem?

The Foundation's role is often misunderstood. Unlike traditional operators, when users pay for Helium network usage, the payments go directly to the gateway owners, not the Foundation. Each gateway effectively operates like a mini telco, coordinated via protocol rules.

The Foundation is funded separately and focuses on ensuring the network’s growth, usability, and public awareness. Our mission is to maintain and nurture an open, functional, and decentralized wireless ecosystem, keeping Helium utility-driven rather than speculative.

What options exist for gateway owners or users who want to monetize their tokens?

The process is straightforward. Tokens earned can be moved to exchanges like Coinbase or others globally, depending on the user's region. From there, they can be traded for fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies.

Helium now operates on the Solana blockchain, having migrated from its own chain. This shift has been a major improvement—reducing technical overhead and enhancing performance, while still maintaining fast transaction times and low fees, essential for IoT scale.

Beyond IoT, Helium has also expanded into mobile networks. How does that work?

Helium’s mobile network is an exciting extension. It leverages Wi-Fi gateways configured with Passpoint, allowing cell phones to automatically join available Helium Wi-Fi hotspots. When a Helium signal isn’t available, devices can fall back to partner networks like T-Mobile.

Through this system, Nova Labs—a Helium ecosystem partner—has been able to offer unlimited mobile plans for as low as $20 a month, dramatically undercutting traditional providers. This strategy builds additional coverage density, especially in urban areas, and provides users with cheaper or more reliable alternatives.

Could the mobile network also support high-data IoT devices like cameras or robots?

Absolutely. While the current focus is on serving smartphones, technically, the SIM cards and connectivity can support a range of devices—robotics, tablets, mobile edge compute nodes—anything requiring mobile data.

Some developers are already experimenting with embedding Helium mobile SIMs into non-traditional devices. The business models are still evolving, but the flexibility is there, and it could open up many new IoT use cases where cellular or Wi-Fi hybrid connectivity is advantageous.

For those interested in getting involved, where is the best place to start?

Helium.com is the main hub for information. The Foundation and broader community are very active on channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Discord, and mailing lists. Developers, gateway owners, and newcomers alike are welcome. Personally, I’m most excited when people share photos of gateways being deployed or new sensor prototypes. Seeing real-world innovation on the network is incredibly rewarding—this community thrives on building, and every new deployment strengthens the decentralized future we're creating.

Transcript.

Erik: Joey, thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

Joey: Hi, Erik. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Erik: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I interviewed the COO of Helium, Frank Mong, back in 2019. I'm sure there's been a lot of development since then. So I'm really looking forward to hearing what have you guys built in the past five years.

Joey: Yeah. Oh, boy. It's been — where to start? So yeah, Frank Mong, COO of a company now called Nova Labs. And so I'm coming to you from the Helium Foundation, which is effectively the non-profit side of the whole network.

Erik: So just to clarify that. Was helium rebranded as Nova Labs, or are those separate entities?

Joey: Helium Inc. handed the IP to the Helium Foundation, formerly known as the Decentralized Wireless Alliance. So we're the sort of advocates and all of the fun stuff for our space. Then Helium Inc., yes, become Nova Labs. And so they are the builders of mobile carrier and some other things within the network.

Erik: Okay. Got you. And so I know that you're involved in a few organizations. Let's say your day job, your core role, is Senior Technical Director at Helium Foundation. I know you're on the core team of Helium. So I'd be curious, are you still involved with Nova Labs at all? Then you're also on the board of directors of the LoRa Alliance. And so I'm very curious to hear, what is the relationship between the Helium Foundation and the LoRa Alliance? So maybe you can lay out your various roles in these organizations and how they interact with each other.

Joey: Yeah, I'll give a little bit of history in there as well. So when Helium first started building a network, it was this IoT network but it was a proprietary protocol that they called LongFi. The realization became, why do this uphill battle? There's such a great ecosystem of devices that live out there that are running this protocol called LoRaWAN. Let's run that on these gateways instead. And because it was effectively the same hardware, that transition was relatively clean. And so we grew LoRaWAN. We did it in this sort of blockchain way. The protocol was entirely native to these Raspberry Pis. We're running more unique nodes than any other blockchain that was out there at the time. It was all gossiping this routing information. And so we sort of built our network in a bit of a custom way while still looking at the LoRaWAN protocol as the core piece there.

But as we've grown and as we started to reach out and work with more existing LPWAN companies, solutions providers, carriers, the whole gamut of stuff, it's become clear we can't go do custom stuff all of the time. A lot of times you're just making more pain for yourself. And so we started to work a lot more with the LoRa Alliance, the Helium Foundation as a LoRa Alliance member. And so I joined the LoRa Alliance Board, largely out of the interest of advocating LoRaWAN. It's something that we do a lot within the Helium Foundation. Our success is dependent on the success of the overall IoT space. And so the more that we can do to help people understand the technologies that are out there, the opportunities to leverage public networks like ours that are out there, the better it is for everybody. It was truly a raising tides sort of scenario.

Erik: Got you. So I think it would be helpful to do a bit of maybe a tech stack walkthrough. I guess people are going to be maybe generally familiar with LoRaWAN, I think maybe less familiar with the concept why is blockchain involved here. What is the role of blockchain, and then what other elements of the tech stack or the ecosystem would be unique in this case?

Joey: You say blockchain, and you'd get a wide range of reactions in various settings when you say that. For us, blockchain is a means to coordinate all of this buildout that we're doing. It's a way to incentivize this buildout that we're doing. Today, there's 300,000 active gateways on the network. That is by far the largest public access network out there. This is all happening through this sort of idea that any person out there can go buy a LoRaWAN gateway. They can plug it in. We've simplified that user experience through our protocol and our apps and all of that other stuff just so that you can get this thing running. You can provide coverage in your home, in your block, in your city, depending on how you configure the thing, and be incentivized through this blockchain, through this crypto mechanism, to set that thing up in the first place but then also to continue to provide that coverage.

Then the coordination piece is also tied in there, where we can create different types of rules to deploy in certain scenarios. So we don't need 10,000 gateways in San Francisco, you know. A couple dozen is probably great. A little bit of redundancy, also great. And so we can build a mechanism into this protocol that says, okay, density gets rewarded to a certain amount. Then those rewards will start to diminish. And so we've effectively seen big build up as people get excited to set these things up, and then the rewards sort of dry up in a very dense area. Then that concentration of gateways they tend to distribute out, it's truly sort of an organism in that sense.

Erik: Explain that a little bit more. Because I would assume that you would actually need 10,000. Because when I think of gateway, I'm thinking of kind of a home gateway. And if you really wanted to have ubiquitous connectivity across a large city, you would need potentially tens of thousands of these. What are the use cases? Maybe what is a gateway? Is it basically kind of my home gateway opting into the network? Then what are the use cases for using these, the integrated network?

Joey: Great clarification. I'm so eager to jump into the technical stuff all the time. The gateway in this scenario is an eight-channel LoRaWAN gateway. This is relatively commodity hardware at this point. We've seen a lot of the price points come down on these certainly, thanks to the volume that is sold through the deployment of growing Helium. And so you can pick up an IoT gateway. It can be an off-the-shelf direct from RAKwireless, or Seeed, or Kerlink, or TEKTELIC, or anybody like that. You can set it up as a Helium gateway. It'll transfer data through the protocol, and you have the opportunity to be rewarded with those tokens for doing that data transfer. If it's a full-Helium gateway, it's going to have one additional component in it, which is this ECC chip, which helps us to identify that particular hardware. That enables the gateway to do what we call proof of coverage. That's the mechanism that we use to grow and scale the network beyond just this idea of the data transfer piece.

But when we talk about numbers, we see 100% coverage in large urban areas with a few 100 gateways. So I'm thinking of like the city of Las Vegas. There was a project that did on-the-ground coverage testing of the entire city with a fleet of vehicle asset trackers. They mapped 99.8% of the city had Helium coverage, and there's a few 100 gateways there that make that happen. And so, of course, things change with terrain, climate, trees. All of those fun things affect RF. That's where we like to see a lot of density and redundancy. That's something that sort of is offered through this mechanism as well.

Erik: Okay. Got it. So this is not your typical home gateway. This has a wider range and can support more devices. Then incentive mechanisms. If somebody is making the original CapEx investment to set this up, the incentive is that they, by setting this up, would get currency on the network. And if they are providing, let's say, one of the earlier movers in a particular region, they'd get more currency. And as there's higher density, that would go down. How would they monetize that? What's the mechanism to kind of earn out through the network?

Joey: The gateway itself, just by essence of being properly configured and turned on, will start to earn tokens if it is within proximity of other gateways. We do what's called beaconing where one gateway sends out an uplink signal. It sends out its beacon. Then all of the surrounding gateways, as they hear it, they can see the signature that's in that beacon. They can verify it. Then the network issues a reward to both of those gateways for participating in this coverage test. And so you can do that N times over and over and over across all of the gateways in a region. And so the network largely incentivizes a scale to grow up to a certain sense of density. But then as it starts to reach over that, that's where some of these downward pressure mechanisms prevent somebody from stacking 100 gateways in a closet or something like that.

Erik: Okay. Got it. Yeah, this is super cool. Because I'm usually being confronted with projects where it quickly becomes apparent that there's kind of a time window, and somebody is going to make a lot of money over six months. Then it's going to, I was just being pitched on a game, right? Can I promote this kind of game? It was extremely transparent that we expect to earn out over the next two months when it goes live, and then it's going to go down to zero very quickly after that. This is an entirely different philosophy, right, which is really a long-term network.

Joey: Bad vibes, yeah. And so you were asking about our involvement with the LoRa Alliance. One of the things that the folks on the board there, the member companies, the folks that I go and talk to, my message to them is that this network exists effectively as a public service. You have this opportunity as a network operator or a solutions provider to tap into this thing that is this global resource. But if you don't, it will go away. That's because the network is incentivized through this data transfer, through the activity of utilizing the thing. So that's very much built from a first principles to be used for IoT. It's not here to build up this thing and then let it explode, and everyone moves to private island or something. I've been working on this thing for several years. I will continue to work on it for several years. Ultimately, we want to see it become self-sufficient so that it is this organism in this, you know. If we're talking blockchain, Bitcoin is this sort of organism people build. But the protocol hasn't changed, and we want to see the IoT protocol reach this sort of stasis state where it can live on its own.

Erik: Let's get into the usage scenarios. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting ones. I'd be kind of interested to hear what are the big scenarios and maybe what are some of the more niche interesting cases. But before we get there, maybe the philosophy or so, is it that I'm an IoT device OEM? Are those going to be the ones that would be kind of, let's say, the customer here? I don't want to have a cellular chip. I want to be able to deploy my devices anywhere, let's say, in the US with a lower cost hardware. Then you provide the network that enables that ubiquitous connectivity. Is that kind of the value proposition? Then who would be the — I guess there could be multiple. But who would be, let's say, the customer, for lack of a better word here, who would be paying for the connectivity?

Joey: It's truly multifaceted. We are, if we're going to make a cellular analogy, we're kind of a RAN. And so it's just open protocol for anyone to go tap into. So if you were T-Mobile, actually went and stood up an LNS under their IoT creators brand, that tapped right into Helium. And so they ended up reselling IoT Helium connectivity under their own brand. They didn't have to credit us. They did, and it was great to see. But somebody could go sign up, set up all the rails, and then go and just sell connectivity coverage as their own service if they wanted to. We see applications in smart water metering, gas metering, things like that, where larger companies net more, for instance, who do a lot of this on a commercial scale then go roam into Helium, and they largely use this as a redundancy layer on their installed network. We're also able to fill in the gaps wherever their gateways aren't covering. Then we have things. One of the things that I'm most excited about is consumer applications, which has just been immensely lacking in the IoT space and particularly in LoRaWAN. We're starting to see stuff come out now where you can go and buy a weather station that is on Helium. You pull it out of a box, and it just works because you are in an urban setting, and you're setting it on top of a roof or what have you. You just kind of can't go wrong when it comes to IoT connectivity. Then I mentioned this vehicle asset tracker. Digital Infrastructure Incorporated is these guys that built this OBD2 tracker that runs directly on Helium, and it sends all of the vehicle telematics over the network. Then they built a really beautiful consumer app so you can find your car, you can unlock your doors, you can see your gas tank level, all that cool stuff, from anywhere in the world. So it's very wide ranging. Then, of course, there's developers and all of the other fun things that you can do on a network like this.

Erik: And the band worth constraints. I mean, I'm sure this is an evolving kind of topic, right? But I know that you're starting to move into Edge AI and so forth so that's kind of a bit of a different game than if you're tracking location of a sensor on a vehicle, for example. What are the current constraints around use cases?

Joey: I think the key word there is Edge, right? So LoRaWAN is not a protocol where you're going to be transferring images or video, things like that. But you can very much say, "I saw 12 people in x, y and z coordinates," right? And that's where Edge AI excels. We've seen devices on the market that have cameras in them, with models that can read a meter, what have you, and then relay all of that information over the network. And so any of those times where you just need the data — you don't really care about the image, you don't really care about the collection mechanism — LoRaWAN is a fantastic solution for getting that stuff where you need it to be back on the Internet.

Erik: Yeah, got it. And for the environments, do you consider this at least, let's say maybe today and in the near future, to be primarily an urban network? I imagine it's much easier to get density there, or I can imagine a lot of use cases going into rural areas, into forestry, right? There's really a lack. There's a need there, right? There's a lack. But it's a much harder problem to solve getting heavy connectivity in those areas. What is the timeline do you think to expand from urban to more rural regions?

Joey: It's tricky to say. It's one of the things that we are constantly working toward. You were noting my sort of various organizations. One of the other roles, the other hats that I wear, is the chair of the IoT Working Group, which is a community group within Helium that is constantly trying to improve the protocol. One of those missions is trying to reach into more rural areas. This idea that people are installing these gateways means that we tend to see these gateways where people are, and people aren't out in the middle of the forest. However, as we start to see more people going and deploying these solutions that are out in the middle of the forest and need to think about roaming back into cities, or need tracking on freeways, or need that contiguous reach, we're starting to see those people deploy those solutions using Helium. And so then we start to get more of those gateways additionally deployed alongside those solutions. So it's very much the model that as people go and build stuff on the network, they sometimes bring their own gateways with them. And so we get a bit more reach there. But going back to this, the protocol builds particular incentives, I think there is a key unlock that can happen that finds ways to build that reach. But I don't know that we're quite there yet.

Erik: Yeah, you can imagine an incentive structure that could work here. I mean, whoever puts infrastructure into a challenging environment bears a lot of cost, right? If you can then monetize that infrastructure by providing to other businesses that can also leverage that to have maybe different requirements, that can make the business case a bit easier. But of course, you need those other businesses to be aware that you have the infrastructure to be willing to pay and to have a working business model, right? So that does need to come together.

Joey: Yeah, and I'll say it's actually also really exciting for me where Helium can play a piece of the story. You'll already find coverage in areas that are surprising. I was hiking Half Dome with a field test device, and all those relays were coming through. I have sensors out in the Santa Cruz Mountains out in the middle of the forest that relay data on a consistent 20-minute interval. But we also have the opportunity, through this roaming concept that I had mentioned, where companies like EchoStar Mobile who build satellite-based LoRaWAN networks also leverage terrestrial networks. Because it is still preferred to work off a terrestrial network and then fall back to satellite, Helium can still play a piece of that story to cover that terrestrial network. Then those devices have the opportunity to do a more high-power transmission and leverage the satellite connectivity. We have this really neat way to start reaching into those far-away valleys and hard-to-cover areas as well.

Erik: Oh, that's interesting. So that would mean that you don't have a chain linking back to civilization, right? So you don't have a chain linking back to a core network, but you can have coverage in maybe some area, in remote region that otherwise lacks coverage. Then you have a satellite node somewhere there that you link to, and that enables the connectivity back to the global network. That's kind of the architecture there.

Joey: Yep, you can get real creative with it. There's a lot of ways to make this stuff work.

(break)

If you're still listening, then you must take technology seriously. I'd like to introduce you to our case study database. Think of it as a roadmap that can help you understand which use cases and technologies are being deployed in the world today. We have catalogued more than 9,000 case studies and are adding 500 per month with detailed tagging by industry and function. Our goal is to help you make better investment decisions that are backed by data. Check it out at the link below. Please share your thoughts. We'd love to hear how we can improve it. Thank you. And back to the show.

(interview)

Erik: How about on the business model side? What have you seen? One of the most fascinating topics related to IoT in general, consumer IoT, B2B IoT, is business model innovation, right? The fact that you have streaming data, you can be much more creative in terms of pricing, in terms of collaborations. What have you seen on the network in terms of business model innovation?

Joey: I think one of the coolest things that I've started to see is selling devices — this exists in other places as well. But it's selling devices that have the connectivity cost built in. You know a predictable uplink interval, how big those uplinks are going to be. The data transfer is like a computable known entity in that scenario. And so you can say, well, it's going to cost me $5 over the lifespan of this device. I'm just going to bake that in. And that is effectively what it looks like on Helium. You can send 100,000 messages for USD $1. That's a message every five minutes for a year, depending on how you want to cut that up. So it becomes very easy to start thinking about building in that way. We've seen this with smart cars and scooters and all sorts of things, with cellular. And so we're starting to see that also happening in the IoT space for small, inexpensive devices.

The other stuff, we see people that will give the sensors away for free for the opportunity to go set up a gateway, because that's what they're excited about. People setting up cold chain tracking solutions for community kitchens and all sorts of things like that to make sure that these big, expensive refrigerators are doing what they're supposed to. I've seen, the really simple one is just take this base Helium pricing model, which is this $0.0001 per message and just multiply it by 5 or 10. Then that network operator takes a little bit of a cut. Then user gets access to a network, and all of the infrastructure is handled for them. So it's certainly a lot of things. Then, of course, there's a fully-managed services with contracting and things like that tied in as well. Oftentimes, that end user doesn't even know that they're using Helium.

Erik: I'm sure the answer is going to be that it's extremely varied here. But do you see more larger corporates, or do you see a lot of startups putting devices on the network? Are there other trends in terms of particular industries? If you were to look at this from an 80-20 rule, what would be the 80% today on the network?

Joey: The managed services is probably the biggest piece, and so we see a couple of companies that have been doing a lot of work in that. That's a great opportunity to build a business because you can own the dashboards, the connectivity, the devices. You have a much bigger piece of the pie. It's larger companies, and so many of the larger LPWAN companies that are out there that are doing these sorts of managed services are roaming onto Helium. And so they are getting that extra coverage through this network. But we're also seeing a lot of stuff that is built just directly on top of the network. Those vehicle asset trackers that I mentioned, weather stations, a number of other solutions that are out there, we're starting to see a lot more of that. People just don't even go worry about setting up gateways anymore, or they just go set up Helium gateways because it eliminates a lot of the infrastructure overhead to just go plug this thing directly into a network server and sort of be done.

Erik: What would the cost look like if you wanted to set up, let's say, one Helium gateway?

Joey: Early on, these things cost $300, $400. But over time, and now that we've worked our way out of the supply chain crisis that we were in a couple of years ago, we're starting to see prices that are much more around $100, $250 for a fully plug-and-play gateway.

Erik: Oh, wow. Okay. So if you wanted to set up 100 of them and actually have kind of coverage in a region, it's like almost an inconsequential budget for a corporate, right? You're talking about tens of thousands of dollars maybe.

Joey: Well, yeah, it's not even a blank at it thing. But the cool thing is, it's probably already there. You're looking at maybe a dozen gateways if you want to go fill some gaps.

Erik: So 300,000 in place now. If you were to look at that as a percentage of total terrestrial coverage in the world, what are we looking at? I'm sure it's still relatively small but concentrated in urban areas. So probably a high percentage of population. But what are we looking at? Are we looking at 5% coverage of terrestrial area?

Joey: It depends on the country. I've done these numbers on a country basis. So that's a little bit closer what I can quote off the top of my head. But North America, Europe, parts of Africa are growing. Some South America coverage is looking really good. Largely, North America and Europe is where this biggest density exists. In those areas, we range country to country from 50%. We're really conservative for these numbers. So when I quote this, it's 50% of people living within a kilometer of a gateway and up to 80% or 90% of people living within a kilometer of a gateway. Knowing LoRaWAN, the reach of these things is typically much, much further than a kilometer, sometimes tens of kilometers. So we've run very conservative numbers. We're seeing actually some growth over time, which is really exciting as these urban dense areas sort of flatten out, as I mentioned. But yeah, we're working on a project that I hope we're just like days away from it, where we're actually building coverage models for every single gateway on the network and then correlating those directly on top of a map where we can say exactly how many people and what footprint is covered.

Erik: Looking at the cost structure here, you could imagine somebody having a business model where they say, we're going to invest $100 million. You have $300,000 now. We're going to put a million gateways around the world, and then we're going to have basically effective coverage everywhere. And $100 million, when you start talking about telco infrastructure, is not very much. I mean, there's a lot of large managed service providers or other corporates that could do this pretty feasibly. I mean, are there companies where you think it would make sense for them to do this? Or is the structure of the project, I mean, why hasn't somebody said we're just going to put in $50 million or whatever and build this massive network and then kind of monetize our network?

Joey: I think it comes down to what their motive is. And so Helium is really great because it's a public access network, and everyone pays the same to go and access it. But if you were spending that $100 million, you would want to make sure that you're getting $500 million out of it, right? And in order to do that in a really safe way, you need to make sure you're driving $500 million worth of traffic through the network. And so part of this is Helium's design from a pricing model is meant to be very competitive. And so it is orders of magnitude, typically, cheaper than any other data transfer that you will have access to in any other network. And so that is generally not appealing to a big commercial operator, unless they're really just looking at, like, we're going and deploying this thing because we have this use case and we need this infrastructure for that use case. If they're doing it to build a network, they'd sign you up for a 20-year contract and $10,000 to have a first conversation.

Erik: Yeah, clear. Okay. So there's not really a business model on selling the connectivity, but it's more about enabling the network where they require connectivity for their services.

Joey: Yep.

Erik: Coming back to the blockchain topic, help me understand how is blockchain essential here. What does blockchain enable you to do that you otherwise would not be able to do with other technologies or other protocols?

Joey: The simplest one is imagining a gateway transferring a single message and then wanting to be able to directly reward that gateway, that owner of that gateway, for the work of doing that one message transfer. That is a non-starter in traditional finance but is second nature in a sort of blockchain environment. And so working up from there, there's a lot of really cool stuff that we can do with managing the routes of all of these devices that get managed on the network. All of the rewards, all of that proof of coverage that I had mentioned earlier, all of those things can be coordinated and settled on the blockchain in a decentralized fashion, which also makes it very bomb-proof, if you will. There's a certain sort of doomsday appeal for a lot of blockchain enthusiasts. This also meets effectively that threshold to say that one entity can't just go away and this entire network goes down. It needs to be resilient and be trusted in order for all of these users to trust going and jumping on and leveraging it as their backhaul.

Erik: Okay. So it's more resilient than one corporation that could say, "We're going to make a significant change to our network." I guess, it sounds like the transaction costs basically go to near zero. So you're able to do things at a scale that otherwise wouldn't make sense or do very small transactions. And kind of tracking that otherwise wouldn't be feasible. Joey, anything else that we haven't touched on that's important for folks to understand about either the Helium Foundation or Helium Networks and how they operate?

Joey: Yeah. Well, touching a little bit on this previous thing with the gateways being rewarded, I think it's important to understand that when a network user pays for traffic on the network, they aren't paying the foundation. They're not paying some core developer group. The payment goes directly to the gateway. So you effectively treat each gateway as its own little mini telco, and they're all coordinated together through this protocol. And so we, as the foundation, our charge is to make sure people are finding utility and leveraging this network. But we are funded separately from the protocol, and we just are here to make sure that things are working and that people know about it. I think it's one of the things that I highlight — as it's sort of a common misconception, and you highlighted it at the beginning of this call — is there's a lot of strange things in the crypto space. But we definitely like to separate ourselves from the more suspicious things you could get involved in, and we really, really focus on the utility and making sure that this thing works and does exist in the future.

Erik: When it comes to somebody monetizing their credits, their tokens, they can transfer them over to Bitcoin. Is that the path? Or how would they go about doing that?

Joey: The cleanest path is to go to some sort of exchange. In the United States, a lot of people use Coinbase. There's a number of other — there's some in Europe. I don't keep track of all of them. I personally use Coinbase. I generally trust it, so it's a nice thing to fall back on. You move them around. You could just send them. You'd scan a QR code. It sends right over. It shows up in the other UI. It's very fast. We leverage a blockchain called Solana as the backbone in the blockchain itself. Something I didn't mention: we used to run our own, and then we migrated everything over. So we don't actually operate a blockchain anymore, which is a frankly huge relief. But yeah, all of this stuff, there's markets for it. You can sort of use the free-market systems to redeem your tokens for whatever you like.

Erik: Yeah, got it. Yeah, I'm looking at the price here. It looks like it's been pretty stable for the past two years. I guess every coin had an initial spike somewhere in 2021. That was kind of an industry ride. But then it's stabilized since then.

Joey: Yeah, and we've done a lot since then. We started with this IoT network. We've now built a mobile network where there's a lot of partners, carriers are starting to jump on board to offload data into the mobile network, similar to what we've seen on the IoT network. The IoT network, I'm focusing on that for the sake of this show. But it has really led the charge and has opened a lot of doors to help tell the story in other domains as well.

Erik: Aside from IoT, what would be the other usage scenarios?

Joey: So the other network that has operated this mobile network is largely Wi-Fi gateways that are configured with a protocol called Passpoint. Then cell phones can load a cert, and they will just join this invisible network that's out in the world whenever it's available. This allows your phone to use a less expensive connectivity option or a more readily-available connectivity option, whatever the scenario might be, and build more density or coverage where there was no coverage previously in a really seamless way. We've seen these carriers, sort of big US -based carrier. It's doing offload testing, and it's going to soon convert to paid offload testing. Nova Labs also operates a carrier within itself that leverages T-Mobile and Helium combined so that when there's no Helium coverage, it falls back to T-Mobile. Through this cheaper connectivity option, they're able to offer an unlimited plan for $20 a month with no extra stuff tied on.

Erik: And on that network, that's really typical mobile apps, video, all of this will work? Or is it, yeah?

Joey: Full cell phone, yep.

Erik: Okay. Interesting.

Joey: Yeah, it's cool stuff.

Erik: Why is that not applicable to — is it just the pricing issue, I guess? I mean, because you could potentially use that also for cameras or something like this. So you could also use this for IoT devices that have to move higher data. But is it just the business model that doesn't transfer as well there?

Joey: Right now, it's just, Nova Labs wants to focus on cell phones. But you could very much, and I've seen people do this, pull those SIM cards and put them in robots and iPads and everything else that you can imagine.

Erik: Cool. Well, Joey, thanks so much for joining us. Last question would be, if somebody is interested in learning more or if they're interested in participating in the network, what's the best way for them to get started?

Joey: Yeah, a lot of venues. So helium.com, sort of the heart of everything. Then we operate a lot of community channels. So LinkedIn, Twitter, Discord, email lists, all that fun stuff, you can find us generally at Helium. I am @jhiller. I do a lot of tweeting and posting about IoT use cases. That is my sweet spot. And I am always, always, always very excited to see pictures of gateways deployed or, more so, sensors being built. I have a particular soft spot for the developers. Show me what you're building. I'd probably be excited about it.

Erik: Cool. Thanks, Joey. I appreciate you coming on the show.

Joey: Yeah, thanks, Erik.