Input Output (IOHK) Cardano360 Monthly Update Show, 2 Jun 2022

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From YouTube: World Mobile: Building smart cities, building smart countries

Description

IOG and World Mobile continue to work together with a goal of connecting the unconnected & banking the unbanked.

Morgan Schofield caught up with Micky Watkins, CEO and Chief Architect James Tagg from World Mobile, to get an update on the next steps WMC’s latest progress. Micky and James from WMC cover activities in Zanzibar as well as exciting news about a new US deployment , and a glimpse of what to expect at Consensus 2022.

Links:

Come and meet WMC & IOG at Consensus 2022: https://iohk.link/cardano-community-event

Learn more about the work Cardano & WMC are doing: https://africa.cardano.org/

World Mobile and IOHK in Zanzibar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86cI_gmCoE

World Mobile – Stronger connected
https://summit.cardano.org/sessions/world-mobile-stronger-connected

Connecting the unconnected, banking the unbanked: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/08/11/connecting-the-unconnected-banking-the-unbanked/

A

Hi there and welcome to this short cardano 360 update, I'm here with mickey and james from world mobile, for a special update on a number of exciting projects happening so welcome mickey james james. I understand you've recently joined the world mobile team. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you'll be doing.

B

Yeah, so I've just joined world mobile. My background is I'm an engineer and an inventor best known for inventing this type of touch screen. That is in your mobile phone, but I also did things like made. The first voice call on a mobile phone, so I I've done quite a few interesting things and what I'm building with world mobile is a dynamic network. So long range, cooperative, cellular communications.

A

And so james, how does that tie into world mobile's ongoing work? In fact, I understand your team is announcing a major country rollout. Can you elaborate more on that.

B

We've just announced that we're launching in the usa and we're bringing our dynamic network technology in and what that allows us to do is use very long range cellular on aerostat, which are high altitude balloons really to give very broad coverage. So an aerostat can see a radio horizon of around 100 kilometers, whereas a tower gets to about 30 kilometers.

B

So we can use that to cover the wide expenses of america that don't have cellular coverage today. We can also use the cooperative nature of it to cover the suburban scenario where there are lots of holes and patches in the cellular. So that's uh that's. What we're doing the.

A

Work, your team is focused on really is incredible, and with that, can you give us an update on your project in zanzibar? Absolutely.

C

The project is going very well. The first air nodes have been deployed, we're now optimizing and measuring everything. That's that's happening there, making sure the economics work. The first adverts have gone up. We've got quite some applicants. The network is getting more robust every day, filling in the gaps and getting ready for the aerostats to land in august or late july. At that point we can launch the aerostat we'll put our payload on top of it and we'll be making not a smart village or a smart city, but actually a smart country.

A

Wow, that is impressive, and so what else is on the horizon for the team.

C

So much we're going to the wtdc, which is a very exclusive development conference run by the international telecommunications union and we've actually been selected to speak at the round table james is coming and a few of the other core team are coming as well immediately, followed by consensus, which I hope to see you there we're going to be the main partner with iohk, which is going to be super, exciting lots of parties, lots of networking, lots of meeting and lots of business discussions as well have been set up whilst we're over there and it's the ongoing.

C

You know we get zanzibar right, we're already prepared to launch into 10 15 different countries licenses, either in application or applied for nigeria. There's some really nice news coming out very soon as well, and that's about it.

A

That's really great to hear so world mobile will be one of the projects joining us at consensus. Can you give us a little preview of what you'll be talking about.

C

We'll be talking about our progression so far where we're going we'll be discussing the usa rollout james discussed that earlier, but this is a massive opportunity, a network that works in rural east africa is just as good as a network for north america. So what we're deploying actually is applicable to all of the world, so there's 3.5 billion people unconnected and yes, africa is our major focus. It's a massive opportunity. It's a huge amount of people that don't have connectivity and the landmass there just is is one of the least connected on the planet.

C

But america is a really big deal as well.

A

Yes, certainly, two very large continents to conquer there. Thank you so much for coming on today's show with us before we go. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience.

C

We are a sharing economy, so we'd like to share for everybody to come and see what we're doing come to me us at consensus, we're open to all types of discussions and just a meet-up and any questions anybody's got. Thank you very much for having us. It's been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you there for a drink.