For the past six months, we’ve been hard at work building Pollen, our very own mobile network. Why on earth would we do this? Our friends and family ask us this often, and you’re probably wondering the same thing. It might sound a little crazy, but this is how we got here.

Pollen started out of Pronto, a company that deploys autonomous trucks at mines around the world. Many of these places don’t have a reliable mobile network (if at all), which is a big problem for autonomous vehicles. But in 2020, something changed. The FCC made CBRS available for commercial use, which was a game changer because it meant we could build our own cell towers and create mini-mobile networks for the sites where our autonomous vehicles operate.

Back in San Francisco, New York, etc., we noticed Verizon and AT&T kept dropping our calls. “Seriously?!” we thought. “We just built our own mobile network at the edge of the world, and these huge companies with billions of dollars and all this power can’t figure out how to provide proper cell service in the heart of Silicon Valley?”

Then we got to thinking about all the other things that people don’t like about existing mobile companies. We saw an opportunity to build something truly revolutionary — something that tackles what we see as the “Four Horsemen” of mobile networks:

• Lack of Privacy and Anonymity: Current mobile networks are run by large corporations that do not value user privacy. In fact, they openly sell your personal information to advertisers, governments (including our own), and others. Not only are they making an obscene amount of money off of your data, they’re charging you an arm and a leg for their services. Pollen, on the other hand, doesn’t collect your personal data, much less sell it.
• Poor Coverage: Coverage by legacy carriers leaves quite a bit to be desired. Think about all of the dropped calls you have in major cities, or the areas of the country where there is simply no cell service at all. Pollen’s crypto-based Incentive Payments encourage community members to provide coverage everywhere users need it.
• ‍High Costs: Legacy carriers still need to earn a profit for their shareholders. In the US, the mobile carrier industry is a three-member oligopoly, leading to some of the highest prices in the world. By utilizing open source technologies and building a decentralized, community-owned and operated network, Pollen will be able to provide mobile service at substantially lower costs.‍
• No User Voice: This one is probably the most important for us. Existing phone carriers just don’t care about their users. They make all the rules, collect all the money, and provide us with customer service so awful that you have to wonder if it’s intentional. Pollen, on the other hand, will allow its users to submit and vote on changes once ownership and governance is turned over to the Enhanced Decentralized Autonomous Organization (eDAO).

So we made Pollen. A mobile network that's private, cheaper, decentralized, and gives back. A mobile network built for you, by you.