In today’s episode of the ‘Start-up of the Week‘, International Finance will talk about the United States-based Bloxtel, which enables blockchain-based 5G mobile networks. The start-up’s breakthrough product is its decentralised eSIM (dSIM) technology, which forms the foundation of its web3 mobile connectivity platform, Open6GC.
Open6GC mainly offers asymmetric and symmetric mobile network authentication, hardware-backed root of trust, and intelligent cross-chain offloading.
Bloxtel provides a comprehensive solution for the web3 decentralised ecosystem, thereby enabling the integration of blockchain for mobile network deployment, apart from supporting decentralised networks by facilitating integration with progressive mobile operators.
Why The Venture Is Unique?
For providing the world’s most advanced 5G standalone platform featuring decentralised SIM technology. Bloxtel’s dSIM comes with user pros like 70% threat reduction for the network (no single failure point and tokenization ensuring cyber attackers are unable to disrupt network operations), 80% latency reduction (peer-to-peer local breakout and packet loss mitigation, which enables faster real-time processing for mission-critical AI-enabled IoT devices), 90% cost reduction (decentralised serverless infrastructure ensuring a zero CAPEX/OPEX strategy for a fully autonomous 5G network) and ten times more capacity muscling up (blockchain-native network core architecture, along with network slicing, significantly scaling up network capacity).
Also, Bloxtel’s decentralised 5G standalone network core software, integrated with dSIM technology, provides superior features like:
Asymmetric Authentication: Public key cryptography allows Bloxtel’s client’s devices (personnel and IoT) to connect instantly and securely with the start-up’s network infrastructure. The venture calls it ‘6G AKA’ in comparison to traditional symmetric authentication known as ‘5G AKA’, provided by its rivals.
Identity Tokenization: Bloxtel’s clients can associate tokenized proofs of ownership with their network subscriptions to prevent costly SIM swap attacks.
Electronic Subscriptions: With a single click, Bloxtel’s clients can order, issue or manage batches of dSIMs electronically. The product works with both eSIM-compatible hardware and older-generation devices.
Integrity Verification: Bloxtel deploys 5G access gateways and small cells in its client’s website, which make the latter tamper-resistant with remote boot attestation and runtime integrity measurement.
Intelligent Slicing: Bloxtel clients can create dedicated virtual access point names (APNs) with Quality-of-Service (QoS) rules and AI-based policy enforcers for a multitude of enterprise applications in their business websites.
Confidential Access: “Have the peace of mind that all of your data traffic from and to connected devices (personnel & IoT) in your private 5G network will never transit through a remote third-party network function server. Your network, your data,” states the American telecom start-up.
Bloxtel assigns its dedicated site technicians to implement the client’s private 5G network deployment. These professionals relay installation and operating parameters into an FCC (Federal Communications Commission)-certified Spectrum Access System (SAS).
The SAS then enables the Bloxtel clients to use the shared 3550-3700 MHz radio band, known as Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). For other markets, the start-up works with the principle of setting up agreements with public operators to sublicense their unused spectrum in tthe clients’ business websites.
“To get started, we ship you an Operator Evaluation Kit that includes a plug-and-play 5G small cell and 5G access gateway. Once installed, you can configure and manage your network including remotely provisioning your IoT devices with dSIMs from a decentralised web application called Operator dApp,” Bloxtel remarked further.
Taking A Product Tour
Among Bloxtel’s key products, the first is ‘Indoor 5G Coverage’. Unlike earlier forms of 5G deployments, which used to rely on existing 4G infrastructure (known as non-standalone/5G NSA), Bloxtel’s 5G Standalone operates without depending on older network infrastructures.
Deploying a private 5G network for indoor cellular coverage helps organisations enhance their connectivity options, improve efficiency, and maintain control over their network infrastructure. Bloxtel’s solution also provides superior indoor cellular coverage compared to traditional Wi-Fi/public cellular networks.
Bloxtel’s ‘Indoor 5G Coverage’ comes with pros like ultra-low latency (ideal for applications like robotics and automation that require real-time data transfer), high bandwidth (enabling efficient transfer of large amounts of data, which is beneficial for applications like high-definition video streaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, and IoT devices), enhanced network security (especially for sectors like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing), easy to customise (client ventures can tailor private 5G networks to their specific needs), network slicing (creating virtual networks within a single physical network), high reliability and reduced interference (Bloxtel provides dedicated and interference-free network operation environment).
Also, the client ventures can stay future-proof in its connectivity infrastructure, while facilitating long-term cost savings and complying with data regulations.
Bloxtel’s ‘Sim Swap Attack Protection’ uses the start-up’s patented dSIM technology to set up the digital proof of ownership. The process involves electronically providing evidence that helps the client enterprise to have legal control over their dSIM assets.
Bloxtel’s AI-powered video analytics involves machine learning algorithms analysing video footage in real-time/post-processing to detect, classify, and respond to various objects and events.
AI algorithms are trained to recognise and detect specific objects/entities in video feeds. Bloxtel’s AI can even identify defects in products in a factory’s assembly line. The start-up’s AI-powered video monitoring can perform facial recognition to identify individuals in the video footage, which comes in handy during critical security situations.
Bloxtel’s AI-powered video analytics has been tailored to analyse the behaviour of objects/people in video streams to detect unusual activities. The application can even detect vehicle accidents, fires, break-ins, or crowd disturbances, through multiple camera feeds.
The solution can create virtual boundaries and trigger alerts when an object/person enters the restricted area. It can analyse historical video data to predict/identify trends. This solution comes in handy for retailers looking to optimise store layouts based on customer traffic patterns. The tool can even assist smart city initiatives like efficient traffic management, waste management, and public safety enhancements.
Bloxtel also assists its client ventures with 5G neutral hosting, which is an emerging business model in which a business can securely share its deployed private 5G infrastructure to support offloading from other paying mobile operators. Last but not least, we have Bloxtel’s ‘Peer Node Validation’, where the start-up’s private blockchain offers a different level of transparency from public blockchains.
Gaining A Decisive Market Edge
While others provide expensive and complex to deploy 5G NSA products, Bloxtel, with its patented dSIM technology, makes its client’s private 5G standalone look and act like Wi-Fi.
While the start-up’s industry peers provide everything-in-the-cloud solutions, Bloxtel sees the approach as a traditionally centralised one, which comes with deployment complexity.
Bloxtel has disrupted the above trend with its white-glove and turnkey serverless platform, which comes with a guaranteed carrier-grade Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99.999% of uptime, with an average of less than six minutes of downtime per year. The whole infrastructure can be deployed in a manner as simple as configuring a Wi-Fi router. The client needs ‘Power’ and ‘Backhaul Connectivity Sources’.
Bloxtel will provide its client ‘Operator Evaluation Kit’, which will include a plug-and-play 5G small cell and 5G access gateway. The client, then, can configure and manage its network including the IoT devices from a decentralised web application called ‘Operator dApp’.