DISH Wireless has added yet another impressive vendor to its list with its newest partnership with Helium. Helium was founded in 2013 with “a mission to make it easier to build connected devices.”
DISH has back-ordered 3.5 million Helium hotspots and is planning on onboarding DISH customers. The deal was announced Tuesday, October 26th, marking the first collaboration between the two companies. “DISH Wireless is building a next-gen 5G network to disrupt the wireless industry and fuel innovation in transportation, health care, education, sustainability, city management, and agriculture,” according to a Tuesday job post.
Helium’s network connects hotspots to the internet using LoRaWAN. According to Trend Micro, LoRaWAN is a “low-power, wide-area networking protocol built on top of the LoRa radio modulation technique. It wirelessly connects devices to the internet and manages communication between end-node devices and network gateways.”
According to the press release, Helium said it has 3.5 million additional hotspots on back-order and 50+ new manufacturers ready and waiting for build approval to sell Helium-compatible hardware.
According to Helium Chief Operation Officer Frank Mong, he sees the backorders as a “rolling 12-month forecast” of the company’s growth.
Helium finalized a $111 million token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz and said that it had been impressed by the company’s token-powered growth incentives.
Helium CEO Amir Haleem said in a press release, “Using Helium Network’s technology and blockchain-based incentive model, DISH is a pioneer in supporting an entirely new way to connect people and things,” he continued, “The CBRS-based 5G hotspots will be deployed by customers, creating opportunities for users, partners, and the entire ecosystem.”
DISH Wireless said in a press release that the company is “no stranger to blockchain” and had been accepting bitcoin payments as early as 2014.
Source: CoinDesk
