Final Frontier drop tomorrow: inside the Philippines deployment

Give me once again. Can you hear me better now? Oh, hello, hello. I can hear you. We'll see about the quality. Seems a little bit better. So it's better or worse? Better. A little bit better. Let me actually do this with them. Can you hear me now? Yes. Is it better? It is much better here. Yeah, finally. So sorry, guys. Technical issues. Okay, so without further ado, what I meant to say that tomorrow we have very important day. It's the final front red drop is happening tomorrow. And with the team decided, just maybe it would be good opportunity to speak with people and introduce a person who's worked a lot for this all happening. And we have Andrew's server in stage as well. Hello, Andrew. Hi, everybody. And we also have Mike, which will also be announcing some important news on the end. How are you doing, Mike? Doing well. Looking forward to this AMA answers some more his drop as well. Most importantly for tomorrow's drop, of course. So two drops this month, both sold out. And tomorrow at 4 p.m. UTC, the last front of the badge one goes live. And they keep saying and people keep going, yeah, sure, marketing, there's no badge deal of batch one. That's not the thing that exists and tomorrow with Spanish. So instead of me sitting here posting another countdown for you guys, because I'm sure you've seen it a lot in the last few weeks. We have Andrew there today with us that will ask a couple of questions that combines of community questions in asking for last few weeks. But first before we start, Andrew, for those who might not know you, can you just introduce yourself and explain your role at World Mobile? Yeah, sure. Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking your time out of your day to listen to us. I'm one of the co-founders of World Mobile, originally from East Africa, spent a lot of time out there. I've known Mickey since we lived together at university. My passion is sustainable and for profit business and World Mobile just takes all the boxes in terms of sustainability at a community level and energy and FinTech as well. And I've been on top of Philippines for a long time now and I'm really excited to show you guys it working. Awesome. Thank you, Andrew. And for those who don't know, Iva or Manifesta, social and community leaders here at World Mobile. Nice to meet you all. If you don't, please join our community channels and we'll have some fun for tomorrow. So the community was so hyped about Philippines, New location, new air nodes, but everyone, quite a lot of people were asking why Philippine Sandry, why this specific location and why it fits more World Mobile best. Yeah, so the background was we started life in Zanzibar, in a fishing village. And we scaled up into Stone Town after that and we went into other countries as well, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria. And as we were doing that, we made quite a lot of noise and people started seeing what we were doing. And we were approached by the e-sorry, sorry team because they just loved the sharing economy, the Web 3 and everything else that can bring over the top of the telecom rails. So we started to get to know them, we made friends and I went out there last year to meet with them to see their existing network and to make plans for us to scale together. And what we learned in the process was a few things. So firstly, the average revenue per user, or the ARPU is much higher in Philippines than it is in Africa. And we saw a massive gap in the market. So there's not a lot of quality ISPs that are providing a fair price to their users. And in that journey, we met Alex Garry. So Alex Garry, he started his journey as a tokenholder, then he became an air node operator and then he became an Earth node operator as well. And Alex lives in General Luna in Philippines. I spent a lot of time with him when I was out there. And he has a lot of connections throughout the Philippines in industry. So fundamentally, those are the core reasons why we went to Sargau first. It's because there's no existing fiber company. There's a cable TV company that doesn't work when it rains and they're at capacity so they can't get any new customers. Globe, they can't provide a good service because they don't have backhaul, they don't have a good network. And people are screaming for a high quality, fairly priced internet service on the island. The only good service is Starlink. And you can't really get that much capacity out of it. I mean, 200 megabits per second sounds a lot, but if you're running a 20 room hotel, it's not enough. So by providing genuine good fiber and the only genuine good fiber on the island, we've got an irresistible product. Also makes sense. And for those current node operators, or for those who just recently put just a node, or even the new node operators that came tomorrow, why so important for them? What what are they actually part of? Yeah, so the frontier nodes are made up of an ONT, which is an optical network terminal. That change is fiber coming out from an electricity pole into a usable internet. That then goes into a router and an access point. So that's what turns your internet into usable Wi-Fi. So that's physically what you're getting when you become an Android operator. Sorry, I need to show you if it's connection issues, are you finished speaking? No, no, I'm here. Yeah. Oh, okay, sorry. What else is there? Okay. I heard that you've actually been in general Luna, so how actually business operate today? In these days, how they operate, what's the vibe today? What's the vibe there? What you can tell us more about? Yeah, so like I said, there's 304 ISPs operating in Jadaluna. I'll say general Luna TV is probably the the better solution, but like I said, they are at capacity and they can't they can't do anymore. And it does them and PLDT that doesn't work when it rains and globe is it's hugely expensive and and you just don't get the bandwidth that they advertise. So general Luna itself, it's it's a super trendy part of the Philippines. So this is where a lot of the affluent Filipinos go for their holidays and the weekends, they'll have a holiday house there. It's where a lot of surfers go to enjoy the coastline and to do nomadic work. So that whole area between general Luna and cloud nine, it's it's just packed with shops and cafes and all these types of businesses supporting the hotel industry and tourism industry. So like if you walk through G.L. it is like literally every 20 feet there's another shop or another business. So there's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of businesses in right next to each other in G.L. And it's super cool place like really chilled vibes people cruising around on moat heads with surfboards and just going to the next cafe to get there the iced matcha. And do a bit of tweeting or or Instagramming. Yeah, it makes sense. Actually, what's left some call matcha last week because of the heat. But but for current node operators and upcoming new node operators, who is the actual customers? Whether it's a residence, is it business, is it surfers or everyone in world? So the end of it's going to be being deployed at a range of locations. So it starts off at somebody's house. So in between all those businesses in general, Luna, there are lots of residences. And then you've got the shops and the businesses themselves. So what this will do is create like a really nice public Wi-Fi mesh because all of the APs will talk to each other. So when you log on to the e-sorry, sorry, public Wi-Fi portal, you'll just be able to roam around G.L. And pretty much you can do that already today. So all of these people buying internet, they're existing people who've got jobs or are running businesses, successful cafes. And like I said, hotelory supporting businesses. And it's a thriving business town. There's like thousands and thousands of people all there are spending money. Yeah, they get it. It's like in a very small stretch. There is over like 300 businesses as well. Yeah, literally every 20 feet on the main road every 20, 30 feet does there's another business. Whether it's a cafe, a surf shop or a hotel. And that's not just a long, it's not just along the street. It's also four or five properties back as well in G.L. So now the operator is going to be busy. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of notes in G.L. And up to cloud nine. That's great to hear. And for those who think that obviously it's not an easy fee to achieve such commercial and strategic business venture. How long does it actually take to or to get into the Philippines from your perspective and from your role? Because some people think it's very easy. Some people have a skeptical. So can you just explain the processes? How long it took you or the team to actually get into the Philippines? We're probably talking 18 months from start to finish where we are today. So like I said, the beginning part of a relationship, you have to make friends, get to know people. Go visit them. Do you do diligence? Understand the broader market environment. And then you get into the commercial and the technical things. So you know, what does the regulator think about third party international end adopters? Where are we going to get a back wall from? Where's the where's the pairing point for the internet? Where's our data center going to be? How much does it cost per kilometer to run fiber? How much do the ONTs and the access points and the the reduced cost? How much are we going to sell it for? Can people afford it and then will people actually pay? So I would say in earnest, you're talking about a year to get all of those contracts in place, you know, the relationship with the electrical co-op, that's a key piece of our strategy, because that A reduces our cost of deployment significantly because we don't have to trench fiber. It also means that we've got a service partner available 24-7 so if anything does happen and we expect the big storm to come in, then things will get repaired as quickly as the electricity gets repaired, which is what they do day and day out. And then it's just having like a mission vision aligned local partner who really believes in what we're doing and wants to be part of it and is able to sell that to other stakeholders in the industry in Philippines. So I've been alluding to an MNO that we're working with. We're very close to a final heads of terms with them. And they're not talking about just using our back all of something that's talking about a full-blown partnership between MNO, e-sorry, sorry, and world mobile to use our back all to, for us to build Wi-Fi and sell a little coverage. So people see the value in what we're doing and they're open to business opportunities with us because we're doing the right thing, we're doing it the right way. So it's definitely not a week or two conversations and we just like... No, every day I get on the phone to Philippines at 7 in the morning to make sure I get them before they go to bed. Good, and you now guys understand how much of the effort it takes to actually get into there, why are you so lucky even being well. But also I've seen a lot of new people asking as well.