DENT wireless ltd is a Hong Kong based company founded by few Finnish people.
Internet connectivity is a key aspect for everyone these days and whether it is WiFi hubs or mobile phone data plans people like connectivity always everywhere.
Dent in simple words tries to come up with a global mobile data marketplace on blockchain technology where users can trade their unused mobile data belonging to specific telco operators.
These are some of the problems in the current business model of mobile data which is tied up with various telco operators which Dent is trying to address and disrupt in the longer term.
- The mobile data supply and prices are controlled all over the world by various telco operators specific to each country and there is no global marketplace available currently for international or domestic users.
- Most users have excess or unused mobile data every month which just gets expires and the profit goes to telco operators and the user is not benefited at all. There is no global mobile data sharing economy currently in place.
- Even though there are regulations in most countries for telco operators to share technology and infrastructure in order to reduce the overall cost of industry and other new technologies like eSIM which can be shared between multiple telco operators, telco operators around the world still work in silos.
- International Data roaming costs are not affordable for regular users unless you are some high profile business people and also cause huge data routing costs from source telco operator to other countries.
This is from the dentwireless website.
As a long-term goal, DENT is aimed to be the global marketplace for mobile data, wherein the best case scenario all the world’s mobile data would be sold and bought and even donated via DENT marketplace, similarly to other commodities like international currencies are traded today. DENT marketplace will give mobile data consumers a direct way to affect the way telcos price their data. This is a win-win situation for both telco operators and users alike. Telco operators around the world get a sharing platform for data and will benefit from excess data repeat sales and can focus more on the mobile technology and infrastructure maintenance and upgrade like 5G. Users around the globe will eventually get a > better price for data and data service availability everywhere.
Now why Dent decided to use blockchain technology and how the entire platform is going to benefit from tokens is one genuine question everyone can have. Dent tokens on Ethereum platform gives the marketplace a universal currency for mobile data which is decentralized and the universal ledger backing keeps all transactions secure. The smart contract feature of ethereum enables Dent to trade mobile data packages efficiently and in future automate for IoT systems as well. So a great backbone comes for free and Dent can focus on working on enhancing and promoting their marketplace.
What was that you mentioned IoT and Dent?
Yes! Ethereum Smart Contracts can be integrated with data from IoT devices to trigger some business use cases. For E.g. My Audi Q5 has a mobile data sim which got expired after a couple of years of purchase. In future Android Auto or Apple CarPlay systems which come with most vehicles can be integrated with Dent marketplace and purchase mobile data as and when required. A perfect automation and machine to machine integration here.
For any business model to be successful they should be able to generate revenue in few years of time. The price appreciation of Dent currency is one way both Dent wireless and investors make a profit out of this. In order for that to happen Dent ecosystem needs to get widely adopted across various countries and maybe become a default platform for mobile data sharing. This is not easy as said. The price of mobile data is different in different countries and the pricing needs to be identified properly for widespread adoption. Needs to get all or maximum telco operators added to the Dent ecosystem. One thing which can quickly make them popular among users is their mobile app which is already in place for iPhone and Android phone platforms. I will get into the details of the app soon. So definitely this is not a white paper crypto token. They have products already in place.
Dent is not just white paper fantasy! Dent has an app for Android and Apple phone platforms. I have tried the android app for Dent. This is how the interface looks now.
Once you sign up for the app you get 30 Dent tokens free as part of the promotion. Currently, there are data packages from the supported operators globally listed on the home screen. You can pick and choose and send to any mobile phone number with country code prefixed. I selected 25 MB data package from AT&T for 3 dentcoins and send to my wife’s postpaid AT&T account. The transaction was prompt. My wife received a message from Dent App saying 25 MB of data has been deposited to your account. Check more details at myAT&T. I verified the details in myAT&T website and found 0.025 GB of data has been added to her current bill cycle as Bonus data. This is how AT&T categorize data purchased from third-party offers. So overall this is cool. In a three month span after I have registered in the app, I am seeing more international mobile carriers with data packages added to dentwireless app.
The app has another feature to purchase or transfer Dent tokens from crypto exchanges or wallets to your personal Dent wallet in the app.
At present, when I am writing this, there is no way to share your unused/excess data to any other mobile number. Dent has recently done some trials on this feature with a telco operator in Hong Kong. Once that feature is enabled then I call it mobile data globalization and liberation. Awaiting for that!
The app does not show the details of the transaction on blockchain ledger. But underlying, the mobile data purchase transaction with dent coin is recorded on dent blockchain ledger. I need to identify what all details are captured there but at present, I do not have that data. It is perfect to have all the underlying blockchain details hidden from the end user as a regular user does not need to know about all the complexities of blockchain to do transactions on Dent App. For the regular user out there it is just a matter of signing up for a phone app and select a data package and send to another supported mobile phone number.
Now let’s see how the data prices go with Dent wireless with the limited information I have. Currently for comparison, with my existing telco operator, I have the mobile data rate of $10 per GB. The purchase I have made in the above example is 0.025 GB of mobile data for 3 Dents. Price of 1 Dent is .0162 USD as of writing this. This means for $0.05 I have purchased .025 GB of mobile data from Dent. So I think based on this rate I will get 1 GB of mobile data for $2 which is way cheaper. But the mobile data package rates vary and this is just an effort to show how prices compare.
I personally feel Dent is a great idea still to get popular so as to see how people can benefit a lot in future and the Dent wireless team is making every effort to work with various telco operators worldwide. There will be competitors for this business model but I guess Dent is far ahead in this race already.
Originally written for medium
References & Image Credits: https://www.dentwireless.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dentwireless.dentapp