The project was born out of his self-driving startup Pronto.
A new mobile data network — accompanied by a website, Medium posts, white papers, dedicated subreddit and Discord channels — quietly launched in San Francisco on Tuesday night, promises a new way to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds, without relying on traditional carriers, and at a cheaper price. The peer-to-peer open source wireless network, called Pollen Mobile, will incentivize its users to run their own mini-cell towers in cryptocurrency and build network coverage in the Bay Area, where the service was originally launched.
Pronto AI, Anthony Lewandowski's self-driving car technology startup, is launching the project. Lewandowski, an early pioneer in the self-driving auto industry, was pardoned last year by former President Donald Trump after being sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets.
Why would a self-driving car startup create a decentralized telecom incentivized by cryptocurrencies? Levandowski, who still serves as Pronto's CEO, told the media in a texted conversation that Pollen Mobile's catalyst stemmed from Pronto's need for reliable, economical mobile connectivity for its self-driving cars. For months, Pronto has been using Pollen in-house for its self-driving cars.
"The reason is simple, our self-driving cars need reliable, affordable mobility connections, but we can't find them." "So we built ourselves and realized that this might be something that other people want too." He later added. "Necessity is the mother of invention".
The distributed pollen mobile network, scheduled to begin initial launches in the coming days, relies on a network of data transmitters that, somewhat strangely called flowers, bumblebees and hummingbirds — radio towers, connection verification devices, and code for mobile phones.
According to its post on Medium, a 2020 FCC rule change allows the company to build its own base stations and create micro-mobile networks for the locations where its self-driving vehicles run.
"We started thinking about all the other things that people don't like about existing mobile companies. We see an opportunity to build something truly revolutionary — to address what we think is the "Four Horsemen" of the mobile web," the Medium blog post said. The "Four Horsemen" refer to a lack of privacy and anonymity, poor coverage, high cost and no user voice."
Known as the "Flower," small base stations range from pizza box size to six feet tall and offer a few blocks to a mile of coverage. These flowers are installed by "flower owners" in their homes or offices and are connected to the Internet to provide coverage for other pollen users. According to information published by the company on its Discord channel, pollen operators earn pollen coins (PCNs) from the user base, depending on the area covered, the quality of service and the amount of data transmitted.
Operators pay upfront for physical data transmitter hardware, with the cheapest (minimum) costing $999, while the largest and most powerful launcher is more than $10,000. Justifying high upfront fees means a leap forward in operators' confidence that the network will succeed and the value of pcnople's fixed supply will increase.
One of the many open questions about this nascent effort is how or whether Islamic Service Providers will react — distributed networks will take the "flower" carrier's home Internet and will feed peer-to-peer data through these networks.
According to the company's network tracker data, the network currently has more than a dozen radio towers in operation in the Bay Area.
Pollen Mobile will ship a small device called The Hornet to collect data on the strength of network coverage. These devices that are verified to be covered by "flowers" are also owned by the user and can be placed in their cars, drones or bicycles. Owners of Bumblebees also earn PCN based on the number of unique coverage verified on a daily basis.
Finally, there are "hummingbirds", mobile devices that use pollen networks. The company says phones need to download an eSIM card to connect to the network, while other devices like laptops can connect through a special adapter called "wings." Users pay for connections using a PCN.
Eventually building a network of users willing to pay for the earliest stages of the data network will depend on the vision of selling a more anonymous mobile network that does not sell or record customer data. Data-only networks also don't allow calls or texting, and users who pay for the service don't get a phone number.
So far, Pollen is operated in-house by Pronto as a subsidiary. Levandowski said it will be handed over to a decentralized autonomous organization, eDAO, and run independently from there. The organization will ultimately manage the development of the network and decide how and where to incentivize users to establish coverage.
"We don't control where the flowers go," Levandowksi told the media. "We design the network so that communities and market forces determine where rewards flow."