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Fastest broadband in Africa — 3air crypto opportunity
Africa

Fastest broadband in Africa — 3air crypto opportunity

Table Of Contents

01
So, what’s the actual problem we are solving? What’s the market we are addressing?
02
Why is there no real broadband in Africa?
03
Our solution to Africa’s broadband problem
04
Why the name 3air?
05
3air market potential
06
3air competition
07
Our system works — Sierra Leone
08
3air expansion plans
09
3air opportunity
10
3air token value capture
11
3air vision

Hi everybody

I already recorded our deck presentation, and you can watch it here, but if you like a bit more comprehensive review and explanation that goes together with this 3air presentation deck, then read on.

Hope you are all doing well. My name is Sandi Bitenc, I’m the CEO of 3air and today I would like to go through our presentation deck with you and introduce you to our amazing project. We tag-lined it “Limitless connectivity. Unlimited potential.” and this might already hint a bit what it’s about. In short: we are bringing optics grade connectivity to developing worlds. Fast and priceworthy.

First, let’s just set one thing straight. I’m not offering any investment here today and 3air is a utility token. You have the option to buy it now at a discounted rate.

So, what’s the actual problem we are solving? What’s the market we are addressing?

Well, we know that developing countries are still struggling with internet connectivity and that it’s one of the main reasons holding back their major development. But when I first started digging deeper into it, I just couldn’t believe at what level the connectivity in Africa really is.

There are around 20% of the people in Africa using the internet, this means that for every 10 people, 8 do not have internet access. The level of broadband connectivity is even worse as there is just no infrastructure for it. Less than 1% of the population have access to true broadband. Just imagine all the stuff that you do online today. Now imagine someone just takes away your phone and computer. Did you notice that your phone is almost useless without the internet?

There is no YouTube or on demand video, no Google-it, no Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. You can forget about banking or online calls or conferencing. If we only take a look as the biggest companies of the last decade or two, they are all somehow connected to the internet. It’s unbelievable how important internet has become for our everyday life.

Internet is the driving force of our century. High speed and stable internet really brings unlimited potential for those under-connected. With a good connection the world becomes smaller, and you can reach all the digitalized things within seconds, wherever they may be. There are no more borders that keep you locked in, even if you cannot travel far. If we add blockchain to this we get some serious advancements that include digital identities, digital currency and digital banking. Fast internet enables online healthcare and online education easily from your home. When you travel you can keep in touch with your family and friends and when you come back you can talk to your new friends that you just made on your last trip. When did you last walk into a bank? Provided you own a bank account. Today all this can be done online and even without a bank.

Why is there no real broadband in Africa?

So why is this an issue? Why is there no real broadband in Africa? There is enough internet capacity available. There is a pretty good internet backbone all around Africa. The problem lays with the last mile solution. Africa’s cities just developed too quickly and without proper design so there is almost no broadband infrastructure existing within cities and now it’s too late to build it. It’s practically impossible to close down roads and dig trenches and lay cables and even if it would be somehow possible it would take billions. The World Bank estimates that building broadband in Africa would take more than a decade and cost more than 100 billion us dollars.

Our solution to Africa’s broadband problem

We say they are wrong. Our solution of the last mile problem is different and unique. With our partner K3, we have a patented and proven technology that can deliver true broadband speeds over air. Don’t confuse this with Wi-Fi or mobile, this is a different technology, and it works in a different way. We are using microwaves, at similar frequencies as a radio and we can connect 15.000 users up to 50 km away on just one base station. Our base station has 240 times the capacity of a mobile tower and almost 50 times the reach. And we can deliver up to 1 gigabit per second of dedicated speed to the end user. The technology truly is amazing and it is already working in over 9 countries all over the world, the final testing ground being Sierra Leone.

We can cover a big city with only 1 to 2 towers and the system is easy scalable to connect additional users. No digging trenches and laying cables needed. We can have a city up and running in 6 months and the technology is compatible with standard modems, routers, switches and cabling.

Low CAPEX and low OPEX allow us to deliver price-worthy services with no compromise on quality and speed.

To power all of this we are building our blockchain platform that will address this, a bit specific market and drive faster adoption and development of a fully fledged telecom platform with integrated, permissionless and trustless aspects, that only blockchain can provide.

There are many ways blockchain can and will disrupt the telecom industry in the future, but moving fist is hard. The major players in the industry are giants that don’t move fast and adapt new technologies and to be honest so are their users. Emerging markets that are hungry for technology are far better at adopting new technological concepts. Just imagine identities.

In the world there are over 1 billion of people that don’t have a means of identifying themselves and most of them come from developing countries. Identities are a cornerstone of modern society and as much as we might hate them at times, can you imagine being without one? How do you prove you are of age, how do you get your drivers license, how do you prove you own a car or a house?

I strongly believe that because of this big gap, people form developing countries will just jump over a generation of technology and will have an easier time adopting to new era. They will just go from no identities to blockchain identities and from no bank account to fully crypto based economy. And the current adoption is showing this trend pretty clearly.

And this is what our blockchain platform is all about, at first the evolution of the traditional services with enhancing them through blockchain. Then testing, developing and improving our platform to perfection with the help of our own userbase and then opening the services up to the rest of the telecom providers worldwide. With the perfect mix of understanding the telecom and blockchain technology with a young and progressive userbase we have far reaching, bold ideas with some revolutionary concepts for the future of telecommunication. Our success is not bound to this though. 3air will be a successful project with just the K3 partnership alone and everything else is just a bonus on top of that.

Why the name 3air?

Oh, maybe at this point also why the name 3air. Well, it’s just because we can deliver 3 services, broadband internet, digital TV and IP telephony through air to our customers.

IP telephony is virtually nonexistent in Africa but still very important to corporate clients and TV is mostly consumed through satellite and that doesn’t work while it’s raining. We have over 150 digital TV channels in our system that we can distribute to our users without big additional costs.

Through the platform we will offer easy access and payment for this services, digital identities for clients that can then be used also outside the 3air ecosystem. The user will be the owner of his identity and potentially store on it data as he pleases and use to identify himself with other apps and web shops and we are working on expanding these IDs even further. They will also keep a provable record of your credit line, making financing possible. There will be a fully fledged loyalty and rewards system built around the 3air token and the provided services. 3air is also a community token that can be used for voting on important changes to the platform and on the community pool intended for funding local projects. We want to develop Africa in as many ways possible and we will go the extra mile to do so. Always.

3air market potential

So what is our market potential? I could say it has Unlimited potential. But only if it has Limitless connectivity. Hehe, no pun intended. We have a quite aggressive expansion plan that is fully feasible. With setting up local working teams and building timeline being 6 months, we can take on a new country every 4 months, starting with Nigeria as probably the biggest or let’s say the golden market of Africa.

Currently Nigeria has only 0.04% — imagine that 0.04% — of broadband penetration. The world average sits at 15.7% and developing countries have around 40% broadband penetration. Only getting Nigeria to 1% broadband penetration would provide a $3.8 billion market potential and at world average that would be $60 billion of untapped revenue and there is no one else to take it.

3air competition

Our main competition lies in mobile operators that are somehow trying to penetrate the data market, but they are not properly equipped. In Nigeria only 7.5% of the people have internet access and of that only 2% is broadband. The rest is mobile data with 4G sitting at 9% and the rest is either 3G or 2G. Did you ever try to even do a google search on 2G? To be hones I did try it a few times and it just got me … let’s say … irritated.

And then those incredibly high prices for this unreliable and slow service with capped data. Our own market research in Nigeria showed that the users want faster internet and they are even willing to pay a premium for it. And the business users are even more eagerly awaiting proper connection. Just imagine a hotel, a bank or a hospital running on a mobile connection. We can offer proper, dedicated connectivity to high end users.

Our system works — Sierra Leone

And I’m not saying this only theoretically. K3 is already operational with a fully fledged telecom in Sierra Leone. Freetown was chosen as a testing ground to prove the feasibility of our model. The city is small and poor even for Africa’s standards. The landscape is very dynamic and that can cause some coverage issues for us, and the weather is really bad. It rains a lot — and when it rains it pours. Satellite TV connection just doesn’t work at those times, and that’s probably the time you would want to watch it the most. Well Sierra Leone is now up and running for 2 years, working perfectly in all weather conditions and covering 96% of the population in Freetown with only 2 base stations. The infrastructure was built, and first clients connected to it within 6 months. There are now over 80 dedicated employees and over 2000 paying customers with an average revenue of 127 dollar per user per month. The company has been experiencing 5% month on month growth and has been valuated at 17 million dollars.

3air expansion plans

I think we are ready to rock; and we’ll also connect Africa in the meantime. Just kidding, Nigeria and DRC are coming soon and the rest of it will follow. That I’m pretty sure. We have been working on all of this over 10 years and now we have a proven, working solution, that we just take and deploy in a new market.

Our team is experienced in the telecom sector as well as the IT and blockchain industry. We have great names from both industries supporting us and helping us getting traction. We also understand the risk in doing business in developing countries especially at the governmental level. Yes, there is risk for sure, but with our established network and years of experience in such markets we are minimizing those risks. And the product is amazing and welcomed at every economical, social and governmental level.

Our vision is also fully aligned with that of Cardano. We may even be the predisposition for Cardano to do their job as good as possible as for the blockchain to have an impact on a society, they first have to be connected and be able to access it. This is also why the Director of IOHK Africa or Cardano Africa is a part of our advisory board.

The success of 3air is depended on its user base and we have been really conservative in forecasting our user adoption, so this is why we have used only the potential users from our partnership from K3 and their user growth rate from Sierra Leone and applying it to our expansion plan throughout Africa. You do need to understand that Sierra Leone is still only a testing ground without any aggressive marketing strategy and that it is far poorer that for instance Nigeria. We also don’t consider only local telecom service customers as our users as there are many ways to get involved with the platform even globally. It is also not the intention to build this platform for K3 alone as we are planning to onboard new telecom and ISP partners in the future. Yet this is the partnership we have in hand right now and we are fairly confident that we can deliver the predicted 400.000 users in the next 4 years. That would actually put us at least in the top 20 cryptos by adoption. With this partnership the yearly revenue from the standard triple play services alone would be around 20 million dollars.

3air opportunity

So, this is now the part that could get interesting for you. We have opened up our token private presale round 2 and at this point in time it’s already half filled. The tokens are being presold and the current price is 4 cent per token. In the end there will be 1 billion tokens ever minted and no minting will be possible afterwards so no dilution of value. The public presale and the IDO will be at the price of 6 cents. The liquidity will be locked in place so no rug pull will be possible. We have tried to make the token westings as reasonable as possible without compromising 3air long term goals and the token economy crashing. The biggest part of the tokens we want to distribute to the community to make it as decentralized as possible and to prevent major token holdings. The team and advisors are vested the most and there is a part of tokens set aside for expanding to new countries in the future, then for marketing and a bunch of tokens will be distributed as airdrops to the community later on. 10% of tokens are intended for staking that will run over 3 years incentivizing early adopters.

At the IDO price of 6c and with 113 million tokens in circulation, the starting market cap of 3air will be just below $7 million.

For everyone wanting to get into the presales, we will do strict KYC and AML screening for each and every person. No exceptions will be made. We aim at a fully transparent and regulated project with long term goals. We are here to stay, and we hope you will support us through our journey. Together we can really make a difference in Africa and the world.

3air token value capture

So, I think you learned a lot about our project and about the 3air token today. We are making this a comprehensive project with a lot of value being captured in the token. Payments are for sure the standard use case that cryptocurrencies have been invented for, but we are also extending the utilities to token staking, providing a token-based loyalty system, creating a big community around the project with its governance functionalities that will focus on developing 3air as well as helping developing the local social and economic society in Africa. The 3air token will be used for providing collateral and microloans within the 3air ecosystem and with time also outside of it. Then there are the possibilities of remittances, and the list goes on and on. In the end we do not even exclude token buybacks and token burns.

3air vision

The 3air vision is huge. We want to become the worlds first blockchain based permissionless ISP service platform that will unite different providers around the world under one system, allowing seamless roaming, device connectivity, security and other IoT functionalities, so much needed in this space. We believe we can decentralize bandwidth and provide fair pricing through secondary markets. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first stage is imminent, connecting Africa and providing them with an improved, blockchain based service solution. Then we can select our next steps together.

So, I told you my vision, now it’s up to you. Do you want to get involved and contribute to changing lives in Africa? If the answer is yes, then now is the right time. You can get more info at 3air.io or on our social media platforms Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.

Looking forward on having you on our team!

3air is a decentralized telecom platform connecting people of Africa with broadband. Please visit 3air.io for more information.


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Sandi Bitenc

CEO @ 3air

CEO at 3air. Serial entrepreneur with a passion for blockchain and crypto. Expert on investor relations and tokenomics. World record holder in 24-hour apnea freediving!

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