The People’s Network is coming to a phone near you - to 5G. On April 14th, the Helium community voted to pass HIP 27, which effectively paves the way for the Helium Network to become the first consumer-owned 5G network in the world.

It’s been quite the journey, one that I’m particularly proud of, but today marks the next chapter in what is sure to be an important milestone in the Helium Network: the path to 5G. The best part, the accelerated growth is almost all community-driven around the world. The current Helium Network is well on its way to becoming the largest and fastest-growing global network with a strong forecast for over 600,000 Hotspots in the next 18 months. There are also another 200,000+ Hotspots on backorder, from a flourishing ecosystem of Hotspot manufacturers, that will soon be deployed. Today the Helium Network, also known as “The People’s Network”, is live with 28,000+ Hotspots in over 3,800 cities worldwide. The cryptocurrency, HNT, started the flywheel of a people-powered network to roll out globally. By adding the open source Helium blockchain, we unlocked the barrier of traditional centralized network build-outs by spreading the cost across a decentralized ownership model. We decided to focus our initial efforts on an open source wireless protocol, LoRaWAN, purpose-built for IoT devices and sensors. We founded Helium back in 2013 with a mission to make the world a more connected place through a ubiquitous, global wireless network.

The path episode 3