Creating a Real Network
Yesterday, we announced our plans for the next phase of Pollen, focusing on how to achieve paid data. Thank you to everyone who joined us on our community call and provided feedback over the last day.
Pollen’s mission has always been focused on building a real network delivering real utility. Over the past year, we’ve been focused on achieving that goal, delivering a number of industry firsts.
In doing so, we’ve also learned a lot of industry firsts, including two critical, hard truths.
- A wireless network that doesn’t have a clear path to profitability via paid data is not a viable network
- A token-only model is not a path to a commercially viable mobile network, particularly in the current regulatory environment
After coming to these conclusions, we determined the best path forward towards building a viable network — including the introduction of US dollar data payments — and communicated that to the community as soon as possible.
We hear loud and clear that many in the community don’t agree with our conclusions — we respect those views, but our conclusions were not arrived at lightly or without extensive deliberation and consultation.
That said, we are listening, and if the community delivers a proposal that provides a better path forward than the one we’ve proposed, we will give it the consideration it deserves as our overarching goal remains building a viable mobile network with real utility.
In the coming days and weeks, we will be releasing additional details on our roadmap to paid data, including specific models for commercially viable deployments.
We will also be hosting another feedback-focused Beehive soon on Discord.
