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Hurricane Helen tore through western North Carolina this fall, killing more than 100 people and causing a loss of nearly $60 billion, according to a state government report.

As the storm worsened, Nova Labs' vice president of business development, Mark Phillips, had an idea. Helium — which is building a network of hotspots that emit wireless coverage — could repurpose its technology to provide cellular connectivity in North Carolina, where more than 20% of the cell sites affected by Helene are out of service, according to an FCC report ).

Phillips sent a letter to Helium Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar, saying they should create a wireless hotspot for disaster relief. Within 48 hours, they had a prototype. Phillips and others at Nova Labs (the developer behind cellular services company Helium Mobile) and Helium then began building the kits while also trying to get their hands on Starlink terminals that connect to the Elon Musk-backed satellite internet provider. .

Starlinks has a backlog of orders, but by connecting, Phillips was able to secure 20 terminals within four days. When Starlink and Helium technology are put together and connected to a power source, a “Helium Hotspot Beacon” is created – a miniature off-grid cell phone tower that uses Starlink to connect to the network and a Helium Hotspot to wirelessly connect to phones.

Helium has sent a few of these beacons to North Carolina as the state's wireless infrastructure continues to fail. The most widely used posting came in Hendersonville, North Carolina, after an organization called Land of Sky sent an email requesting a lighthouse. They installed the devices in a local park, and received more than 20,000 unique connections from local residents. Lighthouses received about 24,000 calls in total.

Because the Helium hotspots provide cellular service and not just Wi-Fi, Phillips told me that anyone within 1,000 feet of the post had their phone automatically connect to the service as it would with a regular carrier.

The saga highlights the utility of decentralized physical infrastructure, a sector referred to as DePIN in cryptocurrency circles.

When natural disasters strike, older cellular carriers may deploy small cell towers - and America's existing cell phone carriers a job This is amid the ongoing wildfires in California. But these solutions are expensive and somewhat inflexible, requiring large trucks to drive around with small towers attached to them.

Helium offers plug-and-play mobile kits for cellular service. If hotspot signals were widely disseminated, they could make America's wireless networks more resilient to natural disasters.

Phillips said Helium has offered 10 sets of hotspot beacons to authorities in Southern California.

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