Minima has announced the completion of a successful proof of concept with the Isle of Man based mobile operator, Manx Telecom
It comes following the trial of the truly decentralised Blockchain protocol that runs in full on mobile phones, which saw Manx Telecom send tokens on Minima’s blockchain, from one phone to another, granting network access without touching any of the operator’s existing billing systems.
Gary Lamb, CEO of Manx Telecom Group stated: “Manx Telecom has a proud history of delivering telecoms innovation, working with like-minded partners. This blockchain PoC with Minima is the latest demonstration of our ability to innovate in an agile way and underlines our commitment to identifying technologies which can power the future of telecoms.”
Growing its consumer demand for data and increasing numbers of networked devices puts Telcos’ charging and billing infrastructure under pressure. To realise the 5G vision for connected devices, the basis of charging and settlement has to change, to avoid it becoming an industry bottleneck.
Hugo Feiler, CEO and Co-Founder at Minima commented: “Minima is perfectly positioned to enable the massive growth expected in Internet of Things devices, while satisfying increased consumer demand for mobile data and services. This successful first proof of concept with Manx Telecom has shown how the purchase and application of tokens can work in practice and we are looking to announce more partnerships and engagement from telecoms companies and other industries in the coming months.”
Minima’s solution to these challenges is to manage access to mobile services via a decentralised blockchain, involving the sale and acceptance of tokens as proof that the user is eligible to access the desired services. Thus replacing the centralised and complex legacy approval systems.
Telcos can sell tokens that represent 100 SMS messages, or 1GB of internet data and accept payment back in tokens when the user requires these services. A permissionless blockchain allows decentralised payments at one of countless base stations without requiring approval by the main operator. Users can then independently create secondary markets for token resale and exchange.
The Minima testnet is currently running and will shortly be made available, alongside Beta Apps, while the mainnet will launch early in 2021.