Helium🎈

A new era of connectivity starts today. Introducing HeliumOS, the full-stack operating system for the business of connectivity. For decades, telecom's playbook was simple: build more. That playbook is breaking. The winners now are whoever can intelligently use the best available network, not just the biggest one. HeliumOS is the platform built for this moment. Real-time Wi-Fi control for venues. Agentic analytics through HeliumAI for operators. Automatic Wi-Fi for consumer apps. Full carrier enablement for carriers and MVNOs. Quality connectivity that just works, driving the retention and revenue that come with it. HeliumOS integrates natively with the Helium Network, the world's largest decentralized wireless network, built by communities incentivized by solana:hntyVP6YFm1Hg25TN9WGLqM12b8TQmcknKrdu1oxWux. That Network already serves millions of mobile users each day in places traditional telecom can't reach. Read the full announcement 🔗

Ever had your phone jump onto Wi-Fi and suddenly nothing loads? That’s what Helium WOX fixes. Before your phone connects, WOX checks the Wi-Fi and the cell signal side by side. Wi-Fi’s good? You hop on. Wi-Fi’s weak? You stay on cellular. A traffic cop for Wi-Fi 🚦 Learn more here:

Venue of the day: TUMI, a luggage store in Cleveland, OH. Yesterday it ranked #39 on the network by data, moving 152.5 GB for 3,919 daily active users. TUMI founder Charlie Clifford named his brand after a Peruvian icon from his Peace Corps days, and now 3,919 people stayed connected on Helium at its Cleveland airport store. Carry-on luggage, carry-on connectivity!

Billions in capex every year, and signal still struggles to get through concrete and glass. Meanwhile ~1.5M phones a day already ride Wi-Fi that’s sitting right there, with real-time quality checks. Guess which one scales.

Venue of the day: PayMore, an electronics store in Nashville, TN. Yesterday it ranked #17 on the network by data, moving 227.3 GB for 3,374 daily active users. PayMore was founded on Long Island in 2011 to keep old gadgets out of landfills, and now 3,374 people stayed connected on Helium at its Nashville-area store. Second-hand gadgets, first-class signal!

Saturdays are the busiest day on the network. Last Saturday, 1.8M+ people connected through Helium, most of them without ever noticing.

Venue of the day: MINISO USA, a home goods store in Frisco, TX. Yesterday 3,960 shoppers connected to the Helium Network inside the store, using 93.3 GB of data without even noticing the switch. MINISO’s Stonebriar store has a chair shaped like the brand’s winking-face logo, and Helium kept everyone connected long enough to post the selfie 😉 Mini prices, maxi signal! See it on Helium World:

Bigger phones mean bigger data appetites. The iPhone Duo launches today with a 7.6-inch screen, and most of what people watch on it will be indoors. Helium offload turns the Wi-Fi already in those buildings into coverage, serving more than a million people a day.

RT @didiomario: Last week, the @helium team and I attended Wireless Global Congress in Vienna. It was great to see so many Wireless Broadband Alliance Inc. members and hear from people across the industry who are working on today’s toughest connectivity challenges. A few things that stuck with me: 1. Quality of Service was on everyone’s mind, and it needs to be built into every network architecture. For Wi-Fi to become a trusted, carrier-grade connectivity layer, carriers need real visibility into quality metrics and real control over the experience. Helium is already tackling this, through @paddenj work on metrics standardization at WBA and IETF and through our Wi-Fi Offload Experience (WOX) Gateway product, which is part of the @helium OS platform 2. Carriers need every tool available to deliver a seamless experience, because no single tool fits every building, venue, or market. Between quality Wi-Fi offload, intelligent network analytics through HeliumAI, and closing indoor coverage gaps, @helium helps carriers and venues match the right tool to the job. 3. As converged wireless scales, the systems that authenticate, measure, and settle each session have to scale with it in an even more standardized, compliant way that carriers can trust. That layer is just as important as the connection itself. Thanks to the Wireless Broadband Alliance Inc., Network X, and everyone who made the week worth the trip. See you at the next one!

French Quarter. Sausalito. Celina, TX. Now Ellicott City, thanks to Corelogix. Towers can’t fix historic towns. The buildings can. 50,000+ locations on the Helium Network and counting.

Hotels, stadiums, grocery stores and hospitals are using their existing Wi-Fi to fix indoor coverage, and the Helium Network pays them for verified service. That’s not an investment, it’s work. Chief Legal Officer Sarah Aberg asked the SEC to say so in its proposed crypto rule.

Yesterday I filed comments re Regulation Crypto Assets. Short version: @helium and other DePIN participants are paid for service, not investing. The rule needs to say this out loud. Read our comments:

Full bars, no service. That’s daily life in parts of Boulder County right now. Redondo Beach dealt with the same problem on its pier until it turned its existing Wi-Fi into a second layer of coverage, now serving 2,000+ people a day. The infrastructure to fill gaps like this is often already installed.

Last week the first 6G field call tested how signal gets through walls and windows. This week a new multi-year 6G research program kicked off to help networks track robots and drones inside airports, factories and ports. The industry keeps circling back to the same place: indoors. Helium offload is already there, connecting more than a million people a day.

The first 6G call was made last week, outdoors in a parking lot. That’s where cellular shines, but concrete walls and energy-efficient glass can block 99% or more of the signal before it ever gets inside. 6G handles the outside, Wi-Fi already covers the inside, and Helium offload bridges the two, connecting more than a million people a day.

1M+ people a day connect through Helium and most of them have no idea. Best kind of network. The invisible kind.

Somewhere in a network planning meeting, someone is still saying “you can’t trust Wi-Fi.” Helium is proving them wrong every day.

DAS Series, Part 2 📶 A DAS (distributed antenna system) is the network of antennas that keeps phones working inside large venues. Most were built around 2011, and upgrading one now costs millions. Who covers that bill, the venue or the carriers, is still unsettled. The answer might already be in the ceiling. Missed Part 1?

Managed services, wireless convergence, and a future where nobody’s checking their bars. LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi. The tech fades into the background. As carriers focus on Quality of Service, seamless performance is all that matters. Thanks @WBAlliance, see you at the next one 🤝

Most of the Wi-Fi you walk past every day is sitting idle. Grocery stores, hotels, stadiums, hospitals. They all paid for solid networks, and most of that capacity goes unused. Meanwhile, the phones in those same buildings are struggling for signal. Helium connects the two. Venue Wi-Fi joins the Helium Network, and carrier phones hop on automatically. No app, no password, no sign-in. When you leave, they hand back to cellular. The venue gets more out of what it already owns. Carriers get indoor coverage without building a thing. And people just have a phone that works. Thousands of locations are already doing it. Helium puts idle Wi-Fi to work. Learn how you can get involved at $HNT

RT @didiomario: Every. Single. Panel. At NetworkX this year. We are shaking an industry. It will not happen overnight but it IS happening right before our own eyes. Can't stop, won't stop!

Every QoS panel this year: “Here’s what this could look like.” Helium: here’s what it looks like. Wifi quality of service (QoS) is the hottest topic in telecom right now. Every conference, every working group, every panel is asking the same question: how do you offload phones onto wifi without making the experience worse? Because that’s the real problem. Carriers want to move more traffic to wifi. It’s cheaper, it’s already deployed, and it’s everywhere. But nobody wants their customers stuck on a bad connection that looks fine on paper. Most of the industry is still in research mode. Helium already turned it into a product. Before a phone ever commits to a network, Helium checks the connection quality in real time. Good wifi? It connects. Weak wifi? It gets skipped. It’s live. 1.5M+ people ride on Helium every day, and most of them never notice. That’s the point. The question isn’t whether QoS becomes the standard for offload. It’s who’s already running it at scale.