This week Oliver interviews Amir Haleem, the CEO of Helium, about PeoplesNetwork, which promises ubiquitous coverage and data costs of $1/year toconnect a Micromobility vehicle. Oliver has been incredibly excited aboutwhat they’re up to for a while, and so welcomed the opportunity to sit downand unpack what they’re doing and why it’s transformational.Specifically, they dig into:- The history of Helium and the importance of permissionless innovation.- What is LoRaWan and why does it matter?- Why does Helium use blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to maketheir back end system function, and why is that largely irrelevant forcustomers?- How big the network now is, and how quickly it’s building out- Why this may well be the new model for how we build out telco networks inthe future.- Why this is perfectly suited to Micromobility, and what possibilities itunlocks in terms of diagnostics, tracking and other value add services- How $1/year data costs are transformational, and how the costs fortransponder and hotspot is going to rapidly decline.- They review the competition for creating connected Micromobility,comparing data costs, battery performance, coverage and the sort.If you’re interested in the Helium project, go and check out The HotspotPodcastFull disclosure, Helium were kind enough to sponsor earlier podcasts andOliver has got a few hotspots to learn more about their tech, but mainly,as you can hopefully hear, we just think they’re on to something andbuilding out the best solution for micromobility connectivity that’savailable in this space.