This is a transcript from our weekly YouTube live AMA:

SPEAKERS: Anita Mlakar, Sandi Bitenc and Ricardo Casanova.

About AMA: On this AMA, we are giving you Roatan Defi Conference Report and Q&A.

AMA Duration: 32:24

Introduction:

[00:00:24] Anita Mlakar: Hello everybody and welcome to 3air ama. Anita Mlakar is my name. I am the host of this ama and I’m really happy that you’re already with us and I’m sure that’s because today’s AMA will be another good one and also your opportunity to get answers to some of your questions. I hope you will use the opportunity.

Of course, I would like to invite you to be a part of our community. We have great community on Instagram not Instagram, I’m sorry, on Telegram, on Discord and on Twitter. And of course, we are present on Instagram and on Facebook. And also, I would like to invite you to be a part or to subscribe to this YouTube channel so that you will get notifications every time we are going live.

I will soon invite our guests to be with us. But first, as always, I will do a short introduction of our project. So, to connect Africa cities with a fast and stable internet connection and become the first fully decentralized telecom platform is one of the goals of 3AIR. So, what we are doing, we are connecting the unconnected, and once people have internet connection, we can then provide them with digital identities.

Then we can bank the unbanked, we are giving them a wallet and so on and so on. But we have also decided on focusing on 3AIR Global, which has always been a part of the plan, original plan, but now since there are some delays in Africa, we have decided to focus on that. So, we plan to make it easy for travelers to be able to use the internet easily with a global SIM card, which can be used anywhere in the world without waiting to buy a new SIM Card to connect every time you come into some new country. So, this is the goal we are following, and things are already in progress. Now every time we have our CEO Sandi Bitenc with us, but today he is on the way, somewhere on the plane or maybe at the airport, and I would like to invite our special guest to be with us. But he is special also because he is a part of 3AIR team. He’s our Chief Revenue officer, Ricardo Casanova. Hello Ricardo, and welcome to our ama.

Ricardo Casanova joins the AMA:

[00:02:53] Ricardo Casanova: Hi Anita, thanks for having me.

[00:02:55] Anita Mlakar: Hey, it’s nice to have you here, Ricardo, and you have a very important role today. You will be talking in the name of 3AIR and I’m looking forward to that.

[00:03:07] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, me too. I hope the questions aren’t too difficult.

[00:03:11] Anita Mlakar: Oh, we’ll see about that. But of course, there’s also opportunity for all of you who are with us to ask questions today, but we have some questions that has, that have already been put into our chat in community, and we will be talking about them a little later. Ricardo, where are you right now?

[00:03:28] Ricardo Casanova: I’m currently in Roatan which is an island in Honduras. Yeah, so we had a conference here. A Defi conference. Which we participated in. And yeah, that’s where I’m at right now.

[00:03:44] Anita Mlakar: Yes. And we are looking forward to hear the report from this conference about what is happening when 3AIR is going global and I know you had some great plans with Sandi. You were both there. And please, Ricardo, do tell us what are the news.

Update on 3air:

[00:04:01] Ricardo Casanova: So those that aren’t aware, Roatan has a special zone called Zeti, which allows them regulatory control. They’re kind of an independent for lack of a better term, municipality within the country where they can make their own rules when it comes to regulatory compliance. So that’s the reason that we came down to meet with the founders of this environment and really talking about what can 3AIR do to help them and what they can do to help 3AIR. So, the conversations that we’ve had will allow us, were in talks to have regulatory compliance approval through the what’s called Prospera the area is called Prospera.

So, it allows us to become a provider for internet access in the area. And really what we’ve already been able to do is become an MVNO through our previous partnerships. So yeah, we’re well on the way and on the road to becoming, you know, regulatory approved. And yeah, so we’re, we’re looking forward to all the benefits that’ll come with that.

And the conversations have been extremely positive. They have a legal team that will provide legal assistance as well for us to be able to put forward some of the solutions that we’re looking to do.

[00:05:59] Anita Mlakar: Okay, Ricardo, so the impressions that you got after this meeting generally are good?

[00:06:06] Ricardo Casanova: Extremely positive.

Yeah. The conversations that we’ve had with people, and we’ve told them kind of what our vision is and, and how we’ve made progress so far. You know, their eyes light up a little bit and people are, you know, asking, hey, how can we how can we invest in this project. So that’s generally a good, good sign is when people want to invest with their money.

So yeah, it’s the feedback has been extremely positive and everyone’s as excited as we are to move forward.

[00:06:45] Anita Mlakar: Mm-hmm. Can you tell us a little bit, Ricardo, how are this. Let’s say talking sort negotiations, whatever they are going, or how are they looking like? Are you sitting at the table? Are you having a presentation? How, how does it look like?

How do the presentations of 3air look like?

[00:07:00] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, so Sandi and I we gave a presentation to the group as to kind of what our vision is and what we hope to do. And then after that it was, it opened up a lot of conversations where we could sit down with people and, have a little bit of a deeper conversation as to, you know, how, what the impacts are and how we would roll it out.

[00:07:25] Anita Mlakar: Well people are also talking a lot in our community about the white paper and like you said, presentation and telling everybody what this project is all about is very important. And so is the white paper actually talking about the whole project. And there are some questions about how far is it when it will be published and why is it not published yet? Could you tell us more about that?

Update on the Whitepaper:

[00:07:51] Ricardo Casanova: Sure. Yeah. So, the white paper our team has gone through it several times. We have a finished product. We sent it off to some legal advisors that we have for them to do one last kind of go at it. This session at Roatan, I think was important for us to be able to validate what was already in the white paper.

So, the delay has been just because we wanted to make sure that we do things right, right out of the gate. We, we want to have a strong foundation to build off of. So. Now that we’ve had the legal folks at, at Roatan and our own legal folks have a peek at it. Now we’ll be able to actually get it out to the community and the community at large.

[00:08:45] Anita Mlakar: But the white paper as it is, is finished?

[00:08:50] Ricardo Casanova: It is finished, yep. That’s correct.

[00:08:53] Anita Mlakar: Okay. That’s good. I think we have Sandi on connection if I’m not mistaken. Just let’s check. Sandi, are you able to talk? Hello, Sandi? Hello and welcome.

Sandi Bitenc joins the AMA:

[00:09:09] Sandi Bitenc: Managed to get through security check on the airport.

[00:09:14] Anita Mlakar: Will they let you go home?

[00:09:18] Sandi Bitenc: I’m not going home, so, but they will. Yeah, they let us through. It’s just the airports, the, the US airports are awful. Really awful.

[00:09:31] Anita Mlakar: Like you said last time, it, the impression didn’t change, right?

[00:09:36] Sandi Bitenc: No, not at all. Same. How are you guys?

[00:09:41] Anita Mlakar: Oh, we are great. How are we, Ricardo?

[00:09:45] Ricardo Casanova: Excellent. Doing really good.

[00:09:47] Sandi Bitenc: Ricardo, still enjoying paradise?

[00:09:51] Ricardo Casanova: I am still in paradise. Yeah.

[00:09:54] Anita Mlakar: I hear some birds singing in the background, Ricardo, so it must be really nice there. Enjoying the view as I can see.

[00:10:05] Ricardo Casanova: They don’t, they don’t shut up. Yeah. First thing in the morning.

[00:10:11] Anita Mlakar: And like you said when we were talking earlier, you will be there for another five days, so you better get used to it, you know?

[00:10:17] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, right. Yeah.

[00:10:20] Anita Mlakar: Sandi, since we have you online, we were already talking with Ricardo a little bit. What was going on there in the conference in Roatan? Could you add your perspective?

Sandi talking about the Roatan conference:

[00:10:34] Sandi Bitenc: So, I really liked it. It was a bit of a different conference than, than the usual one. It was less people, but the people were really focused on what needs to be done and really, especially on the Prospera project in general. They were really focused on that. So, what I really liked about it there was there was no scammers there. So, everyone was kind of doing their business. So, with whomever, you engage in a conversation it was a meaningful conversation and that’s quite hard to get this days on the bigger conferences.

So, I, few nice conversations. What I like beside the conference is that the whole island is kinda embracing new technology, you know, with Bitcoin leading the way. So, I was able to actually pay with Bitcoin onto lighting network on multiple places. So, we’re paying for pizza for our margaritas for diving, you know, everything we could just go and scan a QR code and just immediately pay with, with Bitcoin.

So that was amazing. I, on, when we went for dinner, I actually could pay with Binance Pay in, that regard so far ahead of wherever I was in the world else.

Neither does the UAE or even in Dubai, you don’t have places where you can actually pay so easily with, with crypto. So that amazing to see. So, there are things happening there and looks like jurisdiction is really friendly the thing is just, you know, it’s still, the whole island is really, really small.

So, But they, they have big plans and you know, they, they let us walk a bit, their premises there and showed us a bit the plans that they’re building and planning to build in the future. So, this goes well, it’ll for sure be a big thing. They are also a neighboring country of El Salvador. So, the first country that actually adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. I don’t think that Honduras in general…, but they do allow Prospera to actually act as an independent zone within.

We could access most of people the that are working for Prospera, engaged in really nice conversation, told them what we actually need. And we’re now more or less looking into if you know, if that’s, if what we actually need for our project, if that’s possible to do within infrastructure.

[00:13:42] Anita Mlakar: Great. So, like Ricardo also said, you have also a feeling that this project was very well accepted to those who you were talking to.

How was 3air accepted in the conference?

[00:13:51] Sandi Bitenc: Well, yeah. I think at first, we were, kind of accepted with some skepticism. It’s sometimes overwhelming and everyone are just you know, thinking, yeah, that’s probably impossible. And then when you go get into details explaining how exactly the steps are and what we’ve done already up until now, then yeah, then their eyes open, and I do think we made a really good impression.

Everyone was, whoever we talked to was really excited afterwards. We are for sure taking next steps there and looking into how to formalize things and get from both sides just the best.

[00:14:42] Anita Mlakar: Ricardo, would you say that you and Sandi make a good team?

[00:14:47] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, definitely. We work in tandem, and we did a presentation. And yeah, Sandi has, you know, one strength and then I can come in with a different strength, so yeah, absolutely. I think we make a really good team.

[00:15:06] Sandi Bitenc: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I agree.

[00:15:11] Anita Mlakar: Now having these impressions, having this information from this conference, there was also a question in our community. But anyways, how do you expect, or in which way will it go concerning new partners, investors? What kind of feeling do you have about that?

Update on the partners and the investors:

[00:15:33] Sandi Bitenc: Ricardo had some, some talks when, when I left, so I think that part went okay. I would say that Prospera can bring a lot on that side. Let’s see, we, need some time to really digest, you know, if this were the first talk, we did have a few calls before, but it’s, always something else when you meet people face to face.

And I think that now that we know, done that part, things are moving faster. Cause before that. Yeah. You have a call and then you have another call, and in between usually not much happens so this was the x went there and I do think we will see a lot of movement now on also on the investment partnership side.

[00:16:37] Anita Mlakar: Ricardo, what would you say about it? Both partners and investors?

[00:16:42] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, I think, I think Sandi’s right, it’s It is different when you’re far from someone and you just have kind of these discussions that are, you know kind of broader. But we were able to, you know, Sandy spent, I think a few hours with a very key individual one night to discuss the project. And last night we went to a far end of the island, and I went with a bunch of the key players as well. And so, I was in the car with them. And so that gave us an opportunity to actually chat specifics and kind of drill down on things. So, I had 30 minutes to kind of give my pitch instead of you know, the ten second pitch.

And you know, by the time we got out of the car there was questions of like, okay, well, like how can we invest in this? Right? So, it really, it’s really a different environment when you’re presenting something. And then when you actually get to sit down and, and have a chat you know, one to one and, you know, make it a little more personal. So, I think, like Sandi said, everybody was very excited. Once they understood and, you know, let’s, be frank. It’s, it’s complicated. It is a complex solution. What we’re, what we’re trying to create and build and, and sell. So once people really understand it, they get very excited and they are very, very supportive of it. So, I don’t think investors and partners will be hard to come by.

[00:18:31] Anita Mlakar: Okay, but do we already have the answer to that question? How can we invest, you know, since this is the next step?

How can people invest?

[00:18:43] Sandi Bitenc: Yeah, we do have an outline, but not so easy. So, you, we have an outline. Then there was always negotiations in, in that regards.

[00:18:54] Anita Mlakar: Okay. Just going back to some questions that came in into our community, there was a specific question last ama, you were ready to sign a contract for SIM. How close to launching a product are we?

When is the plan to launch the product?

[00:19:14] Sandi Bitenc: We’re actually pretty close to be able to launch a product. So, there was just, there was one thing that, you know, happens now in Roatan and that could actually bring us far better… Ricardo, help me out with the word.

[00:19:44] Ricardo Casanova: Opportunity.

[00:19:47] Sandi Bitenc: Yeah, in a sense it’s not directly opportunity that I wanted to say, but we’re actually looking into a better product, in that sense. So, getting a better agreement in from right now. But any, in any way, the product will be coming. It’s just the matter of who we signed this with.

[00:20:14] Anita Mlakar: There’s a question from James right now. You mentioned Prospera. What is that?

What is Prospera?

[00:20:23] Sandi Bitenc: Well, Prospera is actually a special zone within Honduras. That have their own jurisdiction. You can think of it like a small country, within a country, so they can write their own regulatory frameworks. And that’s really, really important for what we’re trying to do. Cause the, the telecom regulatory framework is the thing that is keeping most of the players out of the accessing the services and providing services.

It’s, it’s the biggest obstacle to become a fully pledged Telcom. So, this is where we actually think that working together with Prospera might be a game changer for us.

[00:21:11] Anita Mlakar: This is what you were talking at the beginning. James maybe came in a little later. So, thank you for explaining again.

Another question, Sandi, maybe for you, is how will SIM Card launch affect token price?

How will the launch affect the token price?

[00:21:27] Sandi Bitenc: Oh, that’s hard to say and it’s really hard to say about how the token price is ever going to be. And it’s just, first of all, we cannot speak on any of the, the pricing of the token. It’s always a legal issue. And to be honest I don’t know how it will affect it, I hope positively.

[00:21:57] Anita Mlakar: Okay. And another question. Are other telecom companies interested in the product?

Are other Telcos interested in 3air Global?

[00:22:04] Sandi Bitenc: We haven’t been offering anything like that to other telcos, but I think they might be interested. Yeah, for sure. We just, we do want to make things right and properly. And the big telcos, they are usually they would just, what, what they would do, they would take our product and make it like fully centralized and we actually want to run this together with our community. No other telcos would do it, that’s for sure.

We are not really keen on going into any kind of negotiations with them. It’s also not the right time. Until we have traction and customers. It’s, it’s either way, you know, it makes no sense to talk to them. What do you think, Ricardo? You have a lot of experience there on that side of the telcos?

[00:23:01] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, I think they, they would be not very keen on something like this. Initially you know, they, the thing with the carriers is that they provide internet connectivity basically is what they’re providing.

They provide that data connection and it’s a little bit of dump pipe, and that’s what they’ve been fighting against for the last few years, is all they’re providing is pipe. And then you have service providers like Netflix and you know, everybody carrying their data across their connection and their challenge is how do we become more part of the ecosystem than just being the pipe. So, I think once we get rolling and we get some traction and we have some momentum I’m pretty confident that the carriers around the world will be interested in working with us to transform what they actually do because they, they need to diversify how they’re utilizing that dump pipe and make it a smart pipe.

And, you know, I think that we can provide that avenue to do that. So.

[00:24:25] Anita Mlakar: Nice. Okay. So, to underline, you were at the conference, right? You, you actually finished it right now. The feeling is good. You said that also the project, it was well accepted on the side of the people that you are presenting it to. Now, the logical question is of course, what are, or what is the next step?

What is the next step for 3air?

[00:24:51] Sandi Bitenc: Well, we have the next steps in regards, mostly in regard to the legal subject. We need to figure out, and we need to figure out how we can fit into Prospera and how Prospera can actually help us in. It’s, it’s not a hundred percent straightforward process because we could potentially even, you know, help them create a legal framework for us.

So, but it’s, again not so easy. It needs to fit us, but it also needs to be accepted worldwide if we want to be a global carrier.

It’s, it’s mostly work on the legal side with, with Prospera, but we’re also doing a lot of stuff on, on the technical side already. So, things are actually picking up in regards to development from since the beginning of the year. So yeah, next steps. We’ll be talking to some, some of our new team members that are really into telco and mobile operators and MVNOs they know a lot about the legal aspect and where they had legal issues in the past.

So that would be the first thing to, to get to know. And then we need to again, go and talk to Prospera and see, you know, how the regulations currently are there and how they’re in Honduras and then we go back and actually get the lawyer team in, in a sense to yeah, just start writing that. It’s, it’s really, really hard to say how exactly the, the process will look like because we never done it and there’s, I don’t think there’s anyone in the role that’s done this in that way. So, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a challenge. What do you think Ricardo?

[00:26:56] Ricardo Casanova: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a challenge, but I think the we’ve, we’ve laid a, a strong foundation into how we can move forward.

And I think the Prospera team, and their legal team have laid out a strong terms as well. So, I think that we have a lot of positive stuff to move forward on. It’s just a matter of working through the process. So, from our side on the legal side and from their side on the regulatory legal side. Yeah, we’re, we’re in good shape.

And something that also came out of our discussions was. Which was a secondary conversation. And maybe Sandi, you can touch on this a little bit, but of being able to provide them technology that 3AIR already does on the island.

[00:27:56] Sandi Bitenc: Yeah, we started talking about that also. Because the connectivity there isn’t really on par.

I, yeah, I had a SIM Card there and just where we were staying. I just didn’t have a reception, so I was always reliant on my, on a Wi-Fi that also didn’t work really too well. So, they’re keen on having some additional connectivity at the highest level, and we could do that easily. The, the whole island is not too big, so probably one to max two base stations would already be enough. We will look into that, absolutely.

[00:28:44] Anita Mlakar: Okay, so this is another opportunity coming up. Great. Great. Is there any events that you’re planning to go to together maybe in the future?

Are there any new events that are in the plan for 3air?

[00:28:55] Sandi Bitenc: I don’t think there are any events right now in plans. We just need to, do we need to do the work now? Yes. Yeah. And, and get, get the most outta this Prospera.

[00:29:11] Anita Mlakar: Yes. Like, like Ricardo said, also the white paper will be published soon, and things are actually moving on and this is great to know. Ricardo, you are staying, like you said, on the island for the next couple of days. What are your plans?

[00:29:29] Ricardo Casanova: So, there’s a legal conference at Prospera. So, I went out with them last night.

Spent some time with some of the lawyers and legal minds when it comes to legal engineering. So, I’ll be spending some time with them in some work groups at their site and really trying to explore what exactly some of the challenges we might come up against and finding more allies in in what we’re trying to do.

So, yeah, so I’ll be, I’ll be hanging out here and, and going to the, the legal side of the conference and making some more friends.

[00:30:15] Anita Mlakar: Good. Sandi, where are you going?

[00:30:20] Sandi Bitenc: I’m actually flying now for my vacation. So, I’ll be, yeah, let’s see how this goes. If it if it’s going to be a vacation or not.

But we’re flying to Vietnam at this moment time, so that was kind of planned the first in a sense, two vacations in three years. But yeah, I thought I would be already today a bit off, but just working the morning and catching up, so its going to be hard to be disconnected totally. Yeah, let’s see, let’s make let’s make the best out of it.

[00:31:01] Anita Mlakar: And now instead of relaxing at the airport, you know, enjoying your, I don’t know, drink or something. You have to talk here.

[00:31:10] Sandi Bitenc: No, I actually like this, prefer this over a drink. And I’m, I’m really, really happy that the really, a really cool team has been building around the 3AIR global project.

So, you know, I won’t be missed as much because they can take over a lot of stuff that I’ve been doing in the past. We’re also building up again some team some new members coming into on the technical side and that’s even we’ll, we’ll be presenting those. Yeah, new, new personals pretty soon.

[00:31:44] Anita Mlakar: That’s good news. Also being able to rely to somebody to do the work. And I’m great, Sandi, that you will take some days off. Ricardo, Sandi, thank you very much for being a part of this ama. I think we have set and told everything that was needed to be said right at this point. And of course there is another opportunity after 14 days at another our next ama and I’m looking forward to that.

So, enjoy your time. Thank you for all the information. Stay tuned in the community and thank you very much. See you again in two weeks.

[00:32:21] Sandi Bitenc: Thank you. Bye-bye.

[00:32:23] Ricardo Casanova: Thank you. Thanks.

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