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Helium’s plan to create a decentralized wireless network may be on the verge of gaining share.
The company, which aims to create a token-based wireless network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, announced Tuesday that it is no longer the only producer of Helium hotspots, which create the Helium network by mining the project’s HNT cryptocurrency.
RAK Wireless, a Chinese IoT hardware maker will start selling a new, cheaper version of the hotspot, potentially giving the whole company a lift.
Quick Update: Helium aims to create a new type of wireless network, suitable for data from low-power applications such as location, but is also completely separate and independent from existing telecommunications networks. While Helium maintains the network, it is peer-to-peer, which means that it is created by individuals who own and manage their own nodes.
Enter the Helium hotspot. For over a year, people have been able to purchase and deploy one of Bologna’s sandwich-shaped hotspots, which acts as both a node in the network (via low-bandwidth wireless technology called LongFi) and rewards the owner by mining HNT tokens encryption.
Read more: Encryption-based IoT networks travel to more than 250 cities in the United States
Until now, the only way to get a hotspot was to buy one from Helium for $ 495 each. The RAK Hotspot Miner, available today in North America and coming “soon” to Europe and Asia, costs $ 249, or about half that. It will be sold exclusively through Cal-Chip, an online IoT device vendor. The components are nearly identical to the Helium model, according to the company, but RAK can offer a lower price since it can take advantage of the economies of scale that Helium cannot.
“This is the first of what we hope will be many third parties making compatible hardware,” Helium CEO Amir Haleem said in an interview. “This is a huge step for us because up until now we have been the only producer and we have been the bottleneck. We cannot be the only entity contributing [the network], both from the point of view of prices, but also does not speak well to the history of decentralization “.
Helium hardware
Helium hotspot shoppers have typically been excited that they see the value in a low-power network or businesses that want to leverage the technology itself.
A company that wants to use the network to, for example, track the location of its rental scooters can exchange HNT for data credits, which Helium also runs, and have a fixed dollar price. The more hotspots in an area, the better the monitoring, which would likely also fuel demand for HNT, which is trading at $ 1.75 at press time, according to Messari.
You can see where it is going. With the RAK hotspot lowering the login bar, more helium owners could start buying them just to mine the cryptocurrency. If that happens, and those people are scattered across enough different places, Helium’s dream of decentralized wireless (which he calls, with a straight face, “DeWi”) could begin to consolidate, turning all those hotspots into valuable investments.
“Building a wireless infrastructure this way and having decentralized, uncontrolled Internet access by one entity is a critical step in the evolution of the Internet,” said Haleem. The existing universe of low-power access points and gateways is, frankly, an f ** k cluster. So it’s great that a third party starts getting involved in the underlying infrastructure. “
Read more: IoT Nodle App Moves From Stellar Blockchain To Polkadot
Helium technology is promising, but far from omnipresent. The company claims to have sold around 12,000 hotspots, although public network statistics say only 8,641 are active. And while it still sounds like a lot, it takes 100 to 200 hotspots to get a single city “online”.
Some famous companies, including Lime and Salesforce, have used Helium’s technology, but it’s the early days.
In short, helium has to climb much further to reach its decentralized wireless utopia in the clouds, and its bubble could burst at any moment. But at least with the arrival of RAK Wireless, the weight of that trip is a little lighter.
