Elon’s SpaceX announced a partnership with T-Mobile, where T-Mobile users will be able to leverage SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, eliminating dead zones and offering reciprocal roaming to carriers in other countries. This is potentially a huge step in bringing connectivity to  people outside of major metros, and has the potential to impact people far more than just great mobile service.

The Pieces

Space internet

Connectivity from space can provide far better/complimentary coverage to users in remote areas, or nations that have less developed infrastructure to support lots of spread out users. 

Mobile first

Most developing nations have leapfrogged certain aspects of computing hardware, becoming mobile first users. This offers a low cost, exciting opportunity to meet people where they are. The prevalence of mobile phones in these areas gives users a cost effective way to connect to the internet from anywhere.

Power to earn

Cryptocurrency has created ways for users to produce work, earn interest, and grow their wealth outside of banks. Cryptocurrency also opens up possibilities to get paid for global work, and get paid instantly. 

Putting it all together

When put together, you start creating a system where you can work, earn, and grow your money from anywhere in the world, bringing billions of people into the global economy in a decentralized fashion. This opens up a world of possibilities, from allowing many more developers to collaborate on open source software to reducing the cost of transferring money to basically zero.

Bonus!!

Helium Network’s Nova Labs announced today that they would be working with AT&T to create a 5G service that is low cost (as low as $5 a month) that users can opt in to earn crypto rewards. When I wrote the original musing, this hadn’t been announced, and is extremely exciting to see this play out at ⚡️ speed!