Telecom’s Future Lies in Decentralized Networks

The fiscal and different advantages of decentralized web carnal infrastructure networks (DePINs) similar Helium are intolerable for telecom firms to ignore.

Jan 30, 2025, 4:38 p.m. UTC

The telecommunications manufacture stands astatine a captious juncture. As planetary information depletion skyrockets, accepted telecom operators look a cleanable tempest of challenges: stagnant subscriber growth, costly infrastructure attraction and an insatiable request for bandwidth. This capableness crunch is not conscionable a occupation for carriers; it's a looming situation for consumers who progressively trust connected seamless connectivity successful their regular lives.

The telecom squeeze

In 2024, AT&T projected $4.7 cardinal successful tract lease costs. Add successful Verizon and T-Mobile, and the yearly outgo of leases for wireless sum successful the US approaches a staggering $15 billion. As infrastructure costs rise, margins connected net entree are projected to emergence much dilatory for telecom companies. Meanwhile, request continues to explode, with planetary information depletion implicit telecom networks projected to grow by astir 2x by 2027.

The industry's attempts to find caller gross streams, specified arsenic done fixed wireless access, which is utilized to link location net users via cellular connections, volition exacerbate the occupation by placing further strain connected cellular capacity. As a result, consumers look the imaginable of degraded work and rising costs.

Enter the decentralized carnal infrastructure web (DePIN) — a solution that promises to code the capableness dilemma head-on. In a decentralized model, infrastructure is owned, deployed and maintained by aggregate parties alternatively than by a cardinal authorization similar a large telco operator. In instrumentality for sharing successful the outgo and enactment of deploying caller web capacity, infrastructure owners are rewarded with blockchain incentives.

By leveraging distributed resources and blockchain technology, carriers tin see:

1. Rapid sum creation: DePIN networks tin make coverage/capacity wherever it's needed most, and deploy that sum faster than with the accepted model.
2. CAPEX-free scalability: Expansion is nary longer constricted by capital-intensive infrastructure projects.
3. Reduced OPEX costs: By distributing deployment and attraction work, operators trim operational expenses and consumers payment from the savings.
4. Improved performance: Decentralized networks tin springiness operators the quality to take which radios service which users for circumstantial geographies and times of the day.
5. Increased trust: By providing an immutable and transparent ledger, blockchain ensures visibility of the prime of acquisition metrics successful a distributed system.

Overcoming absorption to change

For galore telecom executives, embracing decentralization represents a important taste shift. But they’d beryllium omniscient to see past arsenic they look to the aboriginal of their industry. For example, erstwhile the archetypal power from analog to integer networks began successful the 1990s, consumers and manufacture executives were hesitant to upgrade their systems. But erstwhile implemented, 2G cellular exertion improved capableness and efficiency, and besides enhanced dependable quality, SMS messaging and information services that would laic the instauration for consequent generations of mobile services.

Concerns astir prime of service, power and information nary longer request to deter a modulation to a decentralized network. Each of these issues tin beryllium satisfactorily addressed done standards-based implementations and robust governance models to execute the semipermanent benefits of adopting decentralized models, arsenic good arsenic acceptable the signifier for aboriginal innovation and improvements. By collaborating with DePINs, telecoms tin presumption themselves astatine the forefront of a caller epoch successful connectivity.

Decentralizing accepted carriers: sum instauration and information offload

One of the astir promising introduction points for DePIN is via sum instauration and bearer offload. Decentralized telecom networks tin make sum wherever it didn’t beryllium before. Currently, carriers place regions wherever connectivity is needed, and concern improvement teams prosecute with section existent property owners to lease and make sites for expanded coverage. It’s a time- and resource-intensive process with sizeable costs attached.

DePINs, however, tin present a caller "point-and-shoot" exemplary wherever carriers bespeak straight to the decentralized builder assemblage wherever sum is needed. Carriers tin usage tools specified arsenic the Helium Planner to mobilize communities to make sum wherever they cognize it volition beryllium used, benefitting some the builders and the mobile customers, and instantly enhancing the operator’s network.

Helium stands arsenic a premier illustration of a decentralized telecom web that is successfully being utilized by accepted carriers. The web already collaborates with respective telcos, some successful the US and Mexico, the second via its partnership with Telefónica — a testament to the increasing acceptance of decentralized solutions by large manufacture players.

By incentivizing individuals and businesses to run Hotspots, implicit 400,000 subscribers of U.S. telco carriers link to the Helium Network regular to entree the net done Hotspots. With implicit 500 terabytes of information transfers into Helium, the Network has proven that accepted telcos tin clasp the capacity, information and effectiveness of decentralized networks.

Embracing a decentralized future

Decentralized web enlargement volition go adjacent much captious arsenic 6G rolls retired nationwide successful the coming years. As stated successful the precocious released 6G Vision Statement from the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), we volition request much robust and intentional collaboration crossed the manufacture to “achieve ubiquitous connectivity” to flooded costly cellular infrastructure upgrades. The manufacture needs cost-effective offloading solutions to rotation retired this adjacent procreation of wireless exertion efficiently.

As the telecom manufacture grapples with unprecedented challenges, decentralized networks connection a way forward. By leveraging blockchain technology, embracing innovative partnerships and reimagining the precise quality of connectivity, telecom leaders volition beryllium capable to thrive successful the coming decades.

Mario Di Dio

Mario Di Dio is the GM of Network astatine Nova Labs/Helium, overseeing the improvement & lifecycles of web products that lend to the Helium web and driving the roadmap for aboriginal technologies. Previously, Mario held enactment roles astatine Kyrio and CableLabs. He besides co-created a commercialized SDR level astatine Artemis Networks for LTE mobile web deployment and worked connected European Space Agency and EU-funded projects for outer and aeronautical connection standards.