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Building Telecom for the Real World: World Mobile’s Decentralised Approach · Hardwired by AlphaWire

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Right, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Hardwired.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much, Andrew, for for joining us.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Harry.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: So I always like to start off these podcasts with just a little bit about who you are, your background, how you've come to be where you are today, and then we can dive into everything about world mobile.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: So please fire away.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my name is Andrew Soper.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the co-founders of World Mobile.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm originally from Kenya.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: I spent a lot of time um growing up in Kenya, and then I eventually moved to Tanzania in 2009, uh, where I was running a solar energy company.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: And um I did sort of bespoke energy systems for embassies and telco solutions and made a bit of money, decided I wanted to help people, uh, and I I got into rural electrification.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: I did a few thousand uh solar cocoa uh solar systems for cocoa farmers, found out all the problems that they have, and um tried to fix their problems with with energy, but it was a guy called Mickey Watkins, who I lived with at university, and I've I've invested into previous companies uh of his as well.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: He said, I want to bring cheap internet to the village, how do I power it?
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Um I laughed at him because that's very easy after selling I sold megawatts of batteries uh to the tau coast in Tanzania.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Um so we like long story short, we we did a we we got some internet, it was a horrible solution.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: It was a USSD, so star 141 hash.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: We got some farmers' loans and access to fertilizer delivery, and we doubled their income in a yeah.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: And that was the Eureka moment.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I love solar, I love uh energy background, but without the internet, you can't really help people.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: And I saw a massive opportunity to create a triple bottom line business.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we use renewable energy where we need it, we help communities uh survive and thrive, um, and we make come we make money, so it's commercially sustainable.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you don't make money in one place, you can't go to the next.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: So that's how I got into World Mobile.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: It's it's my decades experience uh living and working in East Africa, understanding the problems the communities face and seeing a win-win solution where we can make money and and help the communities we we work in.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a great, a great story.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: It's something I've sort of spoke to you about uh over the years, and it is something that's genuinely novel.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Like there aren't many people that are doing something that helps every point of person in the chain.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time it is just a for-profit endeavour.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, company needs to make money to be able to reinvest and grow, but the kind of holistic story of why it exists is something that sort has always interested me.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, I suppose, in your own words, for somebody that's maybe not come across World Mobile before, at its like most basic level, what what does the company aim to solve?
2:56
SPEAKER_00: What's the story of why it exists?
2:58
SPEAKER_00: You you've alluded to it a little bit there, but but what what does it what does it do in simple terms, I suppose?
3:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, the mission is to connect everybody everywhere.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: So the the big question is why hasn't that happened already?
3:12
SPEAKER_01: And how do you do it?
3:14
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, like I said, Mickey, he he was in telecoms when we were in our house at uni, and he carried on.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: I I went off and ran the family business.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: Um the the fundamental issue is it's legacy business models in tech.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: So I hope digressing a bit is okay, but essentially what happened what I saw working in telecoms on the energy side um was that the M and O's did everything themselves.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: And they're building a mobile a mobile network operator, that's your Vodafone, your EEO2, etc.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: No problem.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: So the MOs, they have two key stakeholders they have to answer to.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: One is the pension funds and the investment banks.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: They're looking for their 20% IRR, and then they've got to answer to the regulator.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: So the regulator is always saying, hey, you've got to cover the whole country, otherwise, I'm gonna take your your spectrum assets away from you or let someone else use it.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: It's generally uh, you know, it's more of a threat than you know, the regulators don't actually do anything because the MOs pay so much money in tax and royalties.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Um so the MOs they have no incentive to reach the last mile and build this coverage because it doesn't make them money.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: So they can't they can't keep the pension funds, etc., happy.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Um and then it's the the legacy tech.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: So the the the bog standard E Note Bs, which is the big towers that you see um as you drive along the road, uh, these are really, really expensive in the first place.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Um in places like Africa, you have to have diesel generators, diesel get stolen, batteries get stolen, um and you have to pay massive licensing fees to the to the OEMs.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: So your Nokia's, your Ericsson's, your Huawei's, they charge thousands of dollars per site per year just in in software subscriptions.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't have uh two, three hundred people per tower paying circa three, four dollars a month, you you're not making money.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: So why bother going there in the first place?
5:18
SPEAKER_01: So we figured how do we flip this on its head?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is decentralization.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh if you get the communities involved and participating in a way that they actually benefit from the connectivity and make money, you don't have to find uh a tower site.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to worry about stuff getting stolen because you've got security.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: So the next piece is funding.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: How do you fund all of this without going to the pension funds and investment banks?
5:48
SPEAKER_01: So in order, so that in order to do the um the the revenue share, so if I'm gonna reward a host, right, I have to do a revenue share.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna just give them a uh same amount of money every month.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: It's got to be based on real usage.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, in order to do that, you need you need a blockchain.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: So as we went down the whole blockchain web 3 industry route, we gave our web 3 community the opportunity to fund nodes themselves and take a revenue share from that.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: So now we're not having to host, we're not having to fund the infrastructure, we're not having to pay for security, and we're not having to look for customers either, because either there was no connectivity before, or you've got a village chief or a church or uh a school or a hospital or a farming co-op being your salesperson for you, because we we reward them as well through affiliate programs.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: So we've managed to reduce our CapEx and OpEx to almost nothing.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: We have to focus on the tech stack and the sim stack where we're uh a licensed mobile operator.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: Um and we provide that to partners, whether that's another ISP, another MO, uh all of those examples I mentioned, hospital, schools, uh farming co-ops.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: So we've we spent a lot of time in Africa developing this system.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Um we haven't developed any new hardware.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: We've we've bought off-the-shelf hardware from the ubiquities, the microtics, etc., and we've embedded our software into that.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that's allowed us to grow really, really fast.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: So in Pakistan, we've had explosive growth over the last few years.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh Philippines, we're just about to launch, and USA, we've we've laid the groundwork for what's needed.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: A very, very tough market, um, but but phenomenally huge.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: So it's worth worth all the effort and the pain to get there.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: So that's really the the core ingredients to how we feel we're gonna connect the rest of the world.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: It's by giving other people and communities the tools and everything they need to fix their problem or somebody else's problem.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a brave new world for me.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not something I have the most knowledge about, but it it makes sense.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: I think that's like the most fundamental thing about a lot of the decentralized physical infrastructure projects is or in DeFi alone, is does it make sense for everybody involved in the in the cycle of the product or the use case or the service?
8:15
SPEAKER_00: And allowing these communities that there was no incentive or ability to be served beforehand, because it just wouldn't make sense, like you alluded to, with the the the sheer cost of the infrastructure and the security issues, involving those people in the running of the infrastructure that they need and rewarding them for it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: It's it seems a bit silly why nobody's done it before.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I suppose maybe the the blockchain infrastructure wasn't there or many other other issues.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Um but tell us a little bit about how you came to get the token launched, when did this all happen?
8:49
SPEAKER_00: How long have you been running?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: How how does it work now?
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Like what have what's changed?
8:53
SPEAKER_00: How have you learned along the way?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, DeFi moves at a blistering pace, but the this is a bit different.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, what was the what was the journey to getting launched and how is it going, I suppose?
9:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so the the the background is you know, Mickey, you know, he is and his brother Josh, they are very, very clever people.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: Um and when they they go down a rabbit hole, they really understand it.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And so when when the realization that we needed a blockchain to um to validate transactions on our network was needed, um it it was obvious that we needed a token, because you you need you need the token to to do certain types of rewards for the validator part of the network.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Um I you know, I mean frankly, I just I just listened and learned.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: And you know, my background in in learning crypto was oh, let's buy a few ADA and Link and B BTC what went over seven, eight, nine years ago.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Um and just just you know learned what the tokens were and what they did, uh, what the difference between a proof of stake and a uh proof of work blockchain is, for example.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, my my my knowledge is more more the operational stuff, so I've kind of outsourced all the token token to Mickey and and the rest of the team.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: But the you know, the journey was we it would have been seven and a half years ago, we went to Miami and we met with Charles Hoskinson.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: Um that was the second lot of conversations we had because his his mission was to bank the unbanked.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Our message was well, you can't bank the unbanked unless they've got internet.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: So let's let's um collaborate up and we like the look of the Cardano blockchain.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: Um so we we planned to build on that, which we did.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: Um and we did a token launch on Cardano.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: So um we did a circa$40 million token sale, it would have been about six a bit years ago now, six-ish years ago.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Um a long time in the crypto world, eh?
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, we've been around.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh telecoms takes a long time.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll I'll say that.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Um but uh you know it's it's tough to talk about the token because there's a lot of things that projects can't say publicly about how this industry works.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Um you know there's there's so many projects out there that are just vaporware and they don't have anything, but they pay a market maker and they pay for this exchange, and you know, it's they fabricate what the the graphs look like and and people jump into it, and you know, communities are exit liquidity for a lot of a lot of tokens.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Um what what I like about our project is that we reward everything in the real world in fiat.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and we'll we'll get on to other D pins and other projects in a bit, but um, you know that that's fundamental because if you if you if you magic a token and say put a radio, put a Wi-Fi device in your room, and I'm gonna give you tokens I've just fabricated out of thin air, where's the value in that?
12:05
SPEAKER_01: So our our whole model is based on real-world money for the real world stuff.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: For the validation of transactions, they go through our air Earthnode uh network.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: So that's our proof of stake um blockchain.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: We got a thousand validators.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And in order to acquire a validator, you had to buy a certain amount of tokens.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: And you get they get rewarded in tokens.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: So the whole idea is the more users that come online, these are real users paying monthly subscriptions or buying data bundles.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, a proportion of all of that real world revenue goes into buybacks to reward the validators.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: So the whole idea is more users, more buybacks, more rewards for the validators.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Which is, I think, one of the most interesting ways in which cut DeFi companies are run.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's one of the most misunderstood as well, uh at the same time.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Like uh, I don't want to get too much into Purposexes and Hyperliquid and things of that ilk, but they are a very, very good example of when you have genuine use case on a on a service or a D application and you have the company buying back into their own token, it's a very, very good way for everybody involved to be incentivized to make the product work.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Because the more people that use it, the more buybacks happen, the more the people that own that token are in essence rewarded for owning it.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just out of thin air, it's not out of fabrication, it's out of have we done more transactions than we did last year?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Then if so, then we buy back more because of the way that the economy or economics is is set up.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Um I think you'll maybe, maybe it's just my my ignorance and naivety, but I don't think many people actually understand the way in which your tokenomics model works.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Like when people are maybe it's just me, but if you look on Twitter and you talk about the the D Fair applications that are running successful buyback campaigns, it's rare that I might come across somebody talking about the fact that world mobile does it, but you've probably been doing it arguably one of the longest out of any of them.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Um do you think that's something that gets misunderstood by you guys?
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Like what what would you say if if somebody was coming along and wanted to learn about world mobile?
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Is that one of the areas you think they wouldn't know about, or do you think they would?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I suppose it's uh an open-ended question.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: I I just think people don't care that much.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: I think I think people want to see tokens of little dog's faces, and um, you know, or or they want to they want to buy into Bitcoin or or a bigger cap token and use it as a bit of a a hedge within their portfolio.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, even my father-in-law, you know, he's like, Oh, I was on eTory the other day and I bought this this thing that looked like a dog and it's gone 3x, and you know, that's what I think the vast majority of people see crypto as.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Um and that, you know, that's fine for where we are in our journey.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we want to build something really big over the next, you know, we're not talking years, we're talking decades.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: And and it's not just about the user revenue going on the blockchain either.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: It's all of the over-the-top OTT value-added services that go onto it.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Because um, where a user might be spending, like in Pakistan, the RPU is isn't tiny, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_01: It's a very thin margin, very low, low-value market.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, Philippines, where we're launching in in the next week or two, that's going to be much higher.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: But where where you really do well is once that once that infrastructure is paying for itself through user revenue, it's it's all about those value-added services.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: So I mentioned about the loans and the fertilizer delivery.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: It's it's not just that.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Like there's a plethora of services that genuinely help people get get ahead.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's all free revenue because the infrastructure is paid for, the user is acquired.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's some all of those transactions will be going through the EarthNode network.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and they'll be going through the the physical infrastructure as well.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: So that to me is that's when when people start seeing it, um then people will like then all more eyes will will get onto the project.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: But we're we're not one to spend lots of money on marketing, you know, pumping X and you know, it's you're not you're not kind of like a hype cycle coin, you are a genuine infrastructure company that's built real tech and real use case.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important point I want to pick apart.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Is can you dive into a little bit more those other services that you've just you've alluded to, the sort of the fertilizer and the loans?
16:47
SPEAKER_00: But if somebody had never come across World Mobile before and was kind of doing a bit of research, obviously they understand the fact that there's a blockchain and there's a token and there's buybacks and there's a mobile network that's operated, and that's the infrastructures through the nodes that people can buy and and and onboard and utilize.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: But what are the other areas that maybe people wouldn't understand on a first pass?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Can you can you explain to me?
17:14
SPEAKER_01: There's there's so much going on.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Um once once the users have started to pay for bundles or or monthly services, I mean the the big one is finance.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: So we've we've touched on that, but it's not just like hey, let's let's partner up with a DeFi company and organize exorbitant loans.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: Um so we we've already partnered with uh some electrical carts in Philippines.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Um so primarily the partnership was formed because we want to use their poles to run fiber along.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Um but but the relationships have have improved and and now we're through our local partner, we're doing the billing system.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's not just about offering a loan, it's about providing businesses with software solutions that actually help them save money and collect more money.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: So that's one example.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Um one of the visions I have particularly for Philippines is is a wallet.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: Um so Philippines has got one of the the largest Diaspora um in the world.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: And um what's that?
18:22
SPEAKER_01: Sorry?
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Diaspora.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: So Filipinos who've left Philippines, worked in the USA, and they want to send money back to Philippines.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Or Diaspora.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm with you.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm with you, yeah.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: So you know, we we we eventually moved away from Cardano and we're we're building on majority on base now.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: So we have a great relationship with Coinbase.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, so my vision is let's do a stable coin Filipino Peso USD, let's do uh fiat on ramp, off-ramp, uh, which we already have partners for that.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Um let's let's go get a banking license and see how far we can go with this.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Um because once you've got connectivity, if power's a problem, the you know the conflict in the Middle East has shown how um energy poor some countries can be because they're so reliant on on importing oil and and diesel, etc., from Middle East.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, how can we solve even more problems on through the world mobile chain?
19:26
SPEAKER_01: So uh energy is a big one, no no surprise with my background.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: Um so not just home business level, but we're talking utility scale um applications.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: So this is all using our bespoke built from the ground up deep in um plugins.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: So instead of a radio, it can be a battery or a solar system.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh I mean the yeah, the opportunities are uh endless, whether it's whether it's energy, finance, health, agriculture, um fishing, fishing's another big one.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Aquaculture is is a huge market and it helps communities get protein that they need.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Um so I've been busy incubating, uh helping to incubate uh a couple of projects to to help us get where we're going so that we can demonstrate a replicable business model for loads of other people to come in and build on top of World Mobile Chain and the users that we're busy acquiring.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: Um and it's really important partnerships for us are the key.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Like we cannot do everything ourselves.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Um and that's why a strapline is together, we're unstoppable, because uh we truly are.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: If if somebody's passionate about aquaculture, give them give them the tools they need, go for it.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: If they're passionate about finance or whatever, give them the tools, give them the people.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And and and I think that's again, I keep saying the same thing, and a very important point to understand is this isn't just we're a mobile network, this is we're a blockchain that enables very unconnected parts of the world that have massive economic activity that's still done mostly through handshakes, paper, pen, conversations.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Whereas when you add in technology, the ability for that to be tracked, the ability for that to be measured, the ability for that to be lended against or borrowed against, or um the ability for derivative products to allow for insurance, or the ability to manage some of these problems that the Western world has figured out, um, the opportunities really are endless.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: And more than anything, it will help people live better lives and improve their ability to grow and live a better life.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: It's the thing that really excites me about World Mobile is not just this is a very cool way of running a mobile network in a very interesting way and innovative.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: It's for example, a farmer being able to connect up their yield and understand and track and be given software and not have the issue of not having the internet to be able to log on to this tooling, but being there to support them and support these industries.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: You talked about um is it diasporal?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: It's not like remittances, but another word for it, sort of sending money back home in essence.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, my ignorance is showing.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: But um it's a massive, massive industry.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: And and I know I have some friends that send money back home and they pay massive amounts of fees for what shouldn't really be something that should cost them anything.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm I'm excited to see what kind of happens next with it.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I th and I think that's something that like people brush over with the blockchain.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm seeing more and more how people need validation for certain things, and and the blockchain is the easiest, best way to do it.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Um so one of the biggest problems we saw in in rural communities in Africa is that they these traders come um six months before the harvest is due because they know that the farmer has got to pay school fees and buy books and they've got to buy fertilizer, so they offer them 50 cents on the dollar.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So this is a six, seven-month bridge loan for half your yearly income.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Um how do you get that farmer to create like a legacy banking industry um profile?
23:13
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Because they they don't they don't have a you know, they probably a lot of them probably don't have legitimate businesses.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: The the co-ops kind of do, but still for them to go out and get a loan, it's it's uh it's a nightmare.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: If we can get and I and I know um Palmira are doing a great job at this.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: So they're helping farmers put their crop onto the blockchain.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: They're also help again, they're helping incubate, so they're they're actually buying and selling the the crops as well.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: So they're doing like a full end-to-end solution for them.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, but really, once the farmer has said, hey, I've I produced one ton of olive oil, that's on the blockchain.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: So that opens up everything, right?
23:56
SPEAKER_01: You can prove immutably that business that you've done and use that to get finance and and whatever you need.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Um which I I just think the legacy banking system, it's um it's it's gonna take too long to acquire that that proof.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: And and then if you go into the environmental side as well, um so one thing I'm looking at is is putting sensor equipment onto the radio sites, um, you know, tracking certain things.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in an aquaculture area, you can do biodiversity net gain, you can incentivize um environmentally friendly practices, and all of that data is gonna be immensely valuable in the next three to five years.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, carbon credits have you know come and go, um, but I I genuinely think it's gonna be a big, big deal in the next five years.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: And if you've got everything today on the blockchain and it's it's easy and seamless, it's just like extra bonds for the communities, the node owners, and uh the the Earthnode operators as well.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what areas are you most excited about with that?
25:08
SPEAKER_00: You you've talked a little bit about Dispora and and the payments with the stablecoin in the Philippines, but what are the initiatives that uh maybe on the forefront of the horizon that are coming up with things that because you have these nodes, because you have these networks, this uh ability to add in these tertiary services, what what kind of butters your bread to use a very Yorkshire terminology?
25:33
SPEAKER_01: My granddad for Yorkshire, by the way.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: Um that doesn't butter my bread.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Um is that how you said it?
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Butter my bread.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an old saying.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't get me up in the morning.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Um what what gets me up in the morning and dealing with shit every day is is literally just the the connectivity and and the energy piece because I know the physical pain that you get when you can't call the bank or you can't call your loved ones, um, or if you're having to burn candles at night uh because you don't have any energy.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: So that's really what I get excited about is making a scalable, replicable model where we can scale into multiple countries at once.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's the hardest bit.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: Because in Africa, we set up entities we've got licensed ourselves.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: In in Pakistan, we did it all through a partner, Philippines, we're doing it all through a partner.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: So this is really the the validation for World Mobile.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we've got a spread across multiple territories, US, Asia, um, and uh Africa will will start growing when it's ready.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, Africa is horrendously slow.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: And the exciting part is what those partners are gonna do because they understand much better.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I've been to the Philippines, great.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: I went to one island and I went to Manila.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: I I can't claim to understand what 110 million people are doing, but the local partners do.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: They they're fully embedded in industry around the country, from you know, they own parts of telcos, banks, bottling companies, you know, fruit companies, you name it.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Like half of the Del Monte pineapples come from Philippines.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Um they know they know much better than we do what what can help the communities and make money.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: So that's really like my job will be done at World Mobile when that whole partner program is scaling beautifully.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's what that's the most exciting thing for me.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: So it is a very exciting area.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Ah, just to kind of bring it down to to layman's terms, at a basic level, how does that work?
27:44
SPEAKER_00: So you've obviously set up your blockchain, you've set up the nodes, and you're speaking with these energy companies, but if I if I knew nothing about it, how would you kind of walk me through that?
27:56
SPEAKER_01: In energy as an example, yeah.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: So you I would separate the industry into two key segments, right?
28:04
SPEAKER_01: It's it's behind the meter and in front of the meter.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: So if you think about a big power station, everything trickles downstream from there.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: So um I'm very lucky.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: The I I partnered with a man called Francois Pinard, not the famous rugby player.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Um so we were the ones together who did the the thousands of services to cocoa farmers.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, his background is in islanded grids, distributed grids.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, and he he's like actually one of the top authors for for this this solution in the world at the moment.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he consults for a company called Gridworks, who are doing lots of were uh projects in Africa.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: So the conversation with the utility is how do you fix your problems?
28:46
SPEAKER_01: So power generation is is kind of the easy part.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: You can slap on a big diesel generator or a gas turbine and you've got energy.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: But it's the distribution that's the real key problem because and nobody wants to invest there because the margins are so small.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Um so you you can get some solutions where you can you can get smart meters, um, which can talk to the power generation.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Um it it stops people stealing, uh bribing the the energy collection man is a big thing in Philippines.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the the reasons we've done the billing system for the uh for the Sargau utility is is um doing automatic collections through mobile money and not having to read the meter and not having this this theft of units, as in an energy units, kilowatt hours, not physical things.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: Um but it can go one step further.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: So by by the by every household or business meter talking to the power generation, you can actually now distribute energy production.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: So in the UK, you're incentivized to put solar panels on your roof.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
29:57
SPEAKER_01: It means that the utility, national grid, have to buy all of the units that you produce.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: So as a utility, I hate that because I don't know when your house is going to be producing power, and when it's not, I have to guarantee every single uh kilowatt that you need.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: And actually in in the UK, there's plenty of diesel generators running at 5 p.m.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: when everyone comes home and turns their kettle on because the grid can't can't take it.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: So by having um by having these smart meters, there's a whole bunch of other secret sources.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: You can you can help the utility A uh save money by by having less maintenance.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: You can sell more kilowatt hours by reducing the amount of brownouts and blackouts that you have.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and therefore you're you're making more money.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: Um so that's all that's all in front of the meter.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Behind the meter, we can do exactly a similar solution as what they do in the UK.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: So you install solar and batteries at your house, and you you just have a priority system.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: So um solar is always feeding the load first.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: If there's excess solar, you charge the battery because you can't feed back into the grid.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh otherwise you'll electric electrocute some guy trying to work on a line during blackout.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: Um so when a when a blackout does come, the the system automatically turns into battery mode.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: So if you do have solar, you're not using your battery because that's first priority.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: And then when the this when the sun goes down, you start using your battery.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: So you've got power all the time.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Um so we're we're busy looking at doing battery as a service, so essentially a lease operating model where you don't have to buy all this expensive equipment up front, you can pay for it over a longer period of time.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a hotel, um, as an example, if you're running diesel generator for a couple of days a week, all your profit's gone.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: So by charging a similar amount as what you would be paying for the utility um per unit, all of a sudden hotel's profitable all year round.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: And reducing carbon emissions.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: So that goes back onto the whole tracking how many kilowatt hours you've saved from diesel or from the utility, because you we know what the carbon footprint of the utility is.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: So that's technically how it works.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Now it's just it's how do you put it onto the blockchain and how do you get how do you grow that?
32:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like I said, it's essentially a D-pin, it's exactly the same.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: Radio or a solar system doesn't, it's just changing the name.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: And that leads me very nicely on to kind of my my next area that I wanted to discuss, which is you are arguably at the forefront of the mobile and d-pin industry and doing things that no other company's done before.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: But what have you learned building in the space?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: What's surprised you?
32:49
SPEAKER_00: Have you been shocked at where things have turned out?
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe what other people have done or the competitors, or just the response from certain countries?
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Like what's been tell me some stories.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you have a few.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the best ones, yeah, I can't really talk about it.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: It's basically Lambo Rolex Pro's um promising not delivering, right?
33:09
SPEAKER_01: That's the biggest um the biggest issue with this industry on the on the blockchain web 3 side.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, in terms of the telco, the I mean, the fundamental issue is you've got these incumbents who have created huge barriers to entry.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the key assets as a telco is is spectrum.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: So these are radio frequencies, and depending on what you want to use them for, they can go short range with very high capacity, they can go long range with good capacity or very little, or it can be used as a back or these spectrums are no longer available.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: So in the UK, you physically could not become a mobile network unless you buy an EE, an O2, or a Voder.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Um I think I think what we've done really well.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: So we we became an M and O in the US.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh the US is a great market because they don't have national uh that it's the United States, right?
34:05
SPEAKER_01: So every state is its own thing.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Um and then they have they have something called commercial nexuses.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: So even smaller than a state level, and they can actually go into other states.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: You've got these these little commercial nexuses.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Um so we we were able to acquire spectrum um in in three three areas, and that allowed us to be at the same same table as ATT Verizon T Mobile.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's the the biggest difference is that we're doing a full cellular solution.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: It's a and and a full SimStack solution.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: So if you're an ISP, um I was speaking to one last week in the Northeast, you know, he's he's he's doing fiber all around, um, and he wants to sell SIM cards because in the US you don't have direct debits.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: So you have to pay each bill individually.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: So if your ISP comes to you and says, hey, I can I can sell you a SIM card, that's one less bill I have to pay.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: But he can't get a good deal because he's so small.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: So he's he's done, he's bought from an MVE, which is a mobile uh virtual network enabler, a reseller of MVNOs.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: Um and he he just gets a shocking service.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: He can't see what each user is using in terms of data, he can't see where the heavy users are and etc.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: Um we we can provide him a total stack where he can put up a radio.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: So now he's not paying ATT Verizon T Mobile to use their coverage, he's actually using his own, and now your his margin goes through the roof because he's got his own backhaul.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: Um so I think that's that's the key thing.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: A lot of these other projects they've gone down the Wi-Fi offload route.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: We as an MO we know how much the carriers pay to Wi-Fi offload, and we know it's it's very, very little.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you see a D pin saying, Oh, this access point's gonna make you a thousand dollars a month Wi-Fi offload, it's it's um it's all fluff.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, and and MOs just do not want to, unless it's a casino or a hotel where you've got thousands and thousands of people, and they're probably gonna get a deal direct anyway.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Like the famous one is the Google and the Facebook uh offices.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: That's the only location where a third-party company has managed to strong arm the MOs into Wi-Fi offload because they're all ex-Google and Facebook employees, and they put up the Wi-Fi network very cleverly in a way that would force the MOs to roam onto it.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: And those are the only two places in the US that that I know where that actually works.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Um But yeah, those are the two high lines really.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: It's um people, people delivering and big barriers to entry from incumbents.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: Very interesting, I suppose.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: What does the future look like in your head then?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Like we we are where we are now, you've been building for six, seven years.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm sure many things have turned out how you expected them, and I'm sure many things have turned out a bit different.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: But what does the what does the future look like in your head?
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And maybe what do you envisage world mobile becoming?
37:17
SPEAKER_01: So so for me, the future is you know Philippines is going to be a fantastic uh new territory launch.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: The the RPU is circa 10 times higher than than PK.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: Um we we have a two acronyms mean, sorry.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: RPU is average revenue per user, and PK is Pakistan.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: It's a f affectionate, affectionate name for that territory.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: Um so we have a much higher RPU, 10 10x um of what at least of what um Pakistan is.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: We we have a an M and O partner.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: Um so we are and I said by the end of the year we should be we should be good to to be announcing something there.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: So that is building cellular coverage for for the MO.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: So that is world mobile coverage that their users run on to.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Um we we're doing Wi-Fi offload for them again.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm not I'm not convinced that the revenue is going to be great, but it's infrastructure we already have, providing home business, internet, and and public Wi-Fi anyway.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's all gravy on top of existing infrastructure costs.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: Um really I think that extra territory with real revenue, people will see the buybacks and see the the shift and the acceleration.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, because we uh people are gonna be sick of seeing how many nodes come available.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's gonna be wild in the next couple of years.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Um and then really the big thing is, you know, I'm a big fan of the Gary Player uh quote, you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: Well the harder, the more you practice, the luckier you get.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we used to work with balloons.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: So we did a big uh project at Vodicom in Mozambique.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: We were doing tethered balloons, so 300 meters, a thousand meters, and we strap a radio to the bottom, and that the whole idea is the higher you get, the more coverage you can provide, and therefore it's cheaper.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, we realized we needed to get even higher, and we came across a company that unfortunately ran out of money and they went into liquidation.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we acquired all of the patents, the IP, the assets, and we created a new standalone company.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a subsidiary of World Mobile, but it's a standalone company called Combined Space Technologies.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: And this is building a stratospheric platform.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's an unmanned plane, it loiters at 20,000 meters.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: And don't look at it like a telecom solution, look at it like a power station in the sky.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: So one of the bits of IP is that we can keep hydrogen a liquid for nine days without any cooling, which nobody else can do.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: And this is this, and along with the antenna tech and everything else, this is this has had over 110 million pounds thrown at it over 10, 11 years.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: So we've put all the IP that we learned from our aerostats, and we took all of theirs and we created CST.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: And um we're doing uh the final demo with British Telecom in September.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, so this is the the world's largest aerial antenna.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Um Ignore space because that's not in the air.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Um so this is uh it's it's really cutting edge.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: So this is this is providing 5G, 45G standard handsets.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: You don't need a special phone.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh everybody gets 200 megabits per second.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: We can connect half a million people today.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: We reckon we can connect, we reckon we're gonna get to a million people per antenna.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: So you're covering 13,000 square kilometers, you're connecting half a million people.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it all of those edge cases, like I said at the beginning, was when the M and O's don't want to go to the edge because they're not making money, um, the MOs can actually start decommissioning towers that don't make enough or making a loss and replace it with the the Stratum R solution.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: And that to me is it A, it provides a huge level of credibility for world mobile.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: We got a lot of credibility from the Aerostat project with Voda, um, but this takes it to an absolute next level.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: This is, you know, this really is the bee's knees for for um, you know, with with with all the focus going into low earth orbits, you know, Starlink saying, yeah, we're gonna go to direct to device, you know, you can't.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: They're 35 times further away.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, you can't bend physics no matter how clever you are.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Starlink, Amazon when they do it, uh, AST, Space Mobile, you know, maybe they get 10 Zoom calls on a satellite.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: They they can't, they they're never gonna get to the half a million.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, we will we will never compete on the dish side because dish is a high-powered um thing and you know it's creating Wi-Fi in a small area.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, anything direct to device.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: Um and we we're looking at rolling out the first units in 28-29, and we have we've got M and O's lining up for this.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: So I I look forward to speaking to you in a couple of years and and hearing about how it's gone.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: That sounds very interesting.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: It's not something I'd even come across in my research.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I didn't research hard enough, but um very, very interesting, and I think something that people will want to hear more about.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we uh maybe we do another episode in six months' time talking about how that project's going.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: It could be an interesting update.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, if anybody wants to learn more, we have a website called wmstratospheric.com.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: It's got all of the highline information, and yeah, just hit us up on X or wherever you want to talk.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Well that that very nicely leads me into kind of closing statements.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything you'd like to direct people to other than what you've just already said?
43:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, links or anything or anything to share, updates.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an open flaw to in crypto terms.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Shill whatever you like.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Don't shill any mean coins.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Not that I think you would.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, doggy, doggy coin.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: Um no, I just think you know, I'm a big believer in getting to know people, making friends.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's how we met, right?
43:24
SPEAKER_01: You you grilled me for a good what 45 minutes.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what got me, you know.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: I was happy to bump into you uh the other week with James.
43:34
SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, check out check out the website, but I would say more, you know, come into the telegram group and ask questions.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, we we have uh we have a really healthy, engaged uh group community.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: Um so it's just understand what we're up to, why it's important, why we're doing this for real.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, we've been around a long time.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: We haven't gone anywhere, we're not going anywhere.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Um and then just pick and choose which part you're interested in, or potentially which part you want to get involved in, whether it's hosting or affiliates or or uh buying notes.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: It's uh for me, anybody who has a question, feel free, feel welcome, and get to know us.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's all I I'd be very happy if a few more people did that.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: It's all about quality, not not quantity for me.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, Andrew, thank you very, very much for coming on.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: I've learned a hell of a lot more than I than I knew before this call about the way in which mobile networks operate and and the kind of future of deep in, and I'm sure our listeners would say the same.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, genuinely just thank you for coming on.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: It's been a real pleasure.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, likewise.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your time.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been hardwired, everybody.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening, and until next time.