A state report says that Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina in the fall of this year, causing over 100 fatalities and causing damage worth $60 billion.
Mark Phillips was the vice president of Nova Labs business development when Mark Phillips came up with an idea. Helium — which is building a network of hotspots that emit wireless coverage — could repurpose its technology to provide cell connectivity in North Carolina, where more than 20% of cell sites impacted by Helene went out of service, according to an FCC report.
Phillips sent an email to Helium Foundation CEO Abhay K Kumar suggesting they create a mobile hotspot that would be used for disaster relief. They had their prototype in 48 hours. Phillips along with others from Nova Labs, the company that developed Helium Mobile’s cell phone service and Helium began building kits and also trying to acquire Starlink terminals connected to Elon Musk-backed satellite powered internet provider.
Starlinks had a backlog of orders, but Phillips managed to get 20 terminals in four days. Starlink, Helium and their tech work together when plugged in to a power supply. “Helium hotspot beacon” — a miniature off-grid cell phone tower that uses Starlink for network backhaul and a Helium hotspot for radio connectivity to phones.
Helium has sent some of its beacons over to North Carolina to help stabilize the wireless infrastructure. Land of Sky, an organisation in Hendersonville NC, emailed to request a beacon. In a nearby park, the beacons received over 20,000 individual connections. In total, 24,000 unique connections were made to the beacons.
Phillips said that Helium’s hotspots are not Wi-Fi only, but also provide cell phone service. Anyone within 1,000 feet could automatically get service with their carrier if they were in the vicinity of the Helium deployment.
In crypto circles, this saga highlights the benefits of a decentralized physical infrastructure sector called DePIN.
When natural disasters strike, it is possible for legacy cell carriers to deploy mini cell towers — and America’s cell phone incumbents are doing so amid the ongoing California wildfires. These solutions, however, are costly and inflexible. They require large trucks with small towers to be driven around.
Helium provides portable kits for cell service that plug-and-play. Hotspot beacons, if widely deployed, could help America’s wireless network be more resilient against natural disasters.
Phillips stated that Helium had offered 10 hotspot kit beacons to authorities in Southern California.
Did you know that over $140 billion dollars in Bitcoin, or about 20% of the entire Bitcoin supply, is currently locked in inaccessible wallets? Or maybe you have lost access to your Bitcoin wallet? Don’t let those funds remain out of reach! AI Seed Phrase Finder is here to help you regain access effortlessly. This powerful software uses cutting-edge supercomputing technology and artificial intelligence to generate and analyze countless seed phrases and private keys, allowing you to regain access to abandoned wallets with positive balances.
