Industry Thought Leadership

The use of blockchain technology becomes increasingly widespread as people across multiple industries seem to be finding ways to leverage the power of the blockchain for applications that provide solutions to real-world problems. Blockchain technology is needed wherever there is a question of mistrust between the parties and traditional solutions revolving around the implementation of a central authority to assure trust seems to be ineffective. The parties want to establish rules of interaction that exclude any intermediators and ensure that these rules will be be strictly followed.

This blockchain-based trustless environment promises substantial benefits to many industries. The world of telecom is no exception.

Roaming is obsolete
International roaming requires prohibitive expenses for telecoms and subscribers all over the world. Collaboration between mobile operators from different countries to make roaming possible involves huge expenditures on infrastructure support. In fact, the provision of services to a network subscriber in another network requires complex interactions between various pieces of the providers’ equipment.

How exactly can telecommunication companies benefit from blockchain?
Thanks to blockchain technology, operators can fundamentally redefine the roaming rules and significantly reduce costs on technical, commercial and legal levels. Now even the smallest mobile operators can get access to the global telecommunication services market and provide services at the same level as large operators. Large operators, in turn, can expand their client bases.

Bubbletone platform
Blockchain implementation into the telecom industry means building a decentralized ecosystem that allows mobile network operators, and service providers to interact securely and directly. Within this system mobile operators’ interactions are conducted through smart contracts — computer protocols that allow the performance of credible, trackable and irreversible transactions without any third parties. This is exactly what Bubbletone is working on.

The Bubbletone team is building a platform based on a Graphene blockchain core. Developed specifically for the telecommunication industry, the system is focused on professional market players, such as mobile operators, software developers, content and other service providers, and represents a global marketplace where participants can offer and purchase services, as well as resell them to their own clients, i.e. interact directly, without any intermediaries. Incorporation of participants into the platform doesn’t require any hardware customization or advanced integration processes.

Operators can interact with each other as equal partners. All settlements between operators are greatly simplified, made using SDR tokens, which are tied to a basket of five currencies, and performed instantly.

PoC
Bubbeltone has been conducting a proof of concept (PoC) with mobile operators worldwide. PoC is a demonstration, the purpose of which is to verify that the concept has the potential for real-world application.

Implementation of PoC is a complex process. For the main use cases, which are the most claimed by operators, PoC can be described in the following simplified way: a video demonstration that shows how the platform works; provision of two SIM cards with an embedded Multi-account SIM applet to the operator; providing access to two testing nodes for the operator on Bubbletone’s servers; conduction of tests, including publishing offers on the blockchain platform and filling out necessary data in the web account; and downloading of mobile profiles onto SIM cards and checking out their registration in the network of the operator; deployment of two testing nodes on the operator’s servers and conduction of tests.

If the PoC is completed successfully, Bubbletone and the operator launch a pilot project. The use cases that are being developed by the Bubbletone team can be used as a basis of this project as these use cases are the most claimed by mobile operators. However, the project is also focused on any operators’ specific requirements so any other use cases can be implemented. The Bubbletone use cases available here: https://wiki.blockchaintele.com/index.php/Use_cases

Disruption is coming
Blockchain technology has a real potential to disrupt the telecom industry and leave expensive roaming agreements behind. Moreover, the technology is ready for use.

We invite all those mobile operators and service providers who want to bring significant changes to the industry and are interested in seeing evidence of the blockchain capability to participate in PoC. More information available at https://blockchaintele.com/.