Interview with Andrew Soper, CCO of the World Mobile Team Series

Jessica：Thank you for having me.

Andrew：Thank you for having me.

Jessica：It's a pleasure to have you, I hope we start by covering the World Mobile community, I want to talk about your day-to-day work and what your role entails.

Andrew：I've been involved with World Mobile from the very beginning, so my role is really to provide any support to the senior team and the board. My main experience is in running businesses and growing businesses, assisting Micky, Allen, Charlie, Antonio, and anyone else who needs my support, and brings with me 10+ years of experience working in Tanzania. I grew up in Kenya, South Africa, and I bring all of this experience to the team, helping guide their thinking and building processes to implement the vision that seniors and the rest of us create for the company.

Jessica：So maybe you can share a little bit about your background before joining World Mobile and what really got you to where you are today?

Andrew：When I was doing my masters in Plymouth, I actually lived with Micky at the university and we were both very entrepreneurial. We love business. We love business, ideas, and creativity, and we built a telecommunications company called Terminating Minutes. After everything went well I went to Tanzania to inherit the family business, namely voltage protection andsolar energy. In those days, every few years you would have these blackouts, and they would last all day. So by adding a solar panel to your battery system, you basically have a full charge at the end of the day, which means your battery can now work through the night and you can still work the next day. You won't spend a penny on diesel. That, to me, is like a real winner - you get a happy customer, you reduce the amount of diesel that is spent and used in the world, and you provide the customer with a really reliable product.

We basically built on that and ended up with a ton of projects. I have done a lot of work in telecommunications batteries, I am the NorthStar Battery company's representative in Tanzania, but mainly in Tanzania, I know almost everything about batteries.

Jessica：This allows you to see the gaps in the market. So when did you reunite with Micky?

Andrew：So in my travels, I've been looking for a lot of opportunities. I have a different business partner in Tanzania - he is very experienced in grid utility power. We've analyzed the entire market for mini-grids, micro-grids, home solar systems, battery backup and solar farms, you name it, we've looked at it. We eventually got deep into the home systems market and we distribute all of our products. We found the market really attractive, we worked with more than 3,000 cocoa farmers who lived on average three and a half kilometers from the store, and they didn't have electricity. They use candles and kerosene. They lived an average of 3.5 kilometers from the store, they had no electricity, they had to use candles and kerosene, and the lighting was terrible. So by providing these farmers with clean, safe, renewable energy and the latest technology. We used lithium-ion batteries and these systems are still working 6 to 8 years later. We really solved a lot of problems, one problem that we didn't solve or didn't anticipate is that even though they no longer need to walk to charge their phones, they still need to walk to offline stores to do business. Now I'm a full-time employee of World Mobile, and that business is still going on today, and they're still working with those cocoa farms today.

Jessica：We talked about renewable energy solar and green energy. How important is this at World Mobile?

Andrew：World Mobile as a company, we will deploy as much green energy as possible through the network, we will also implement the circular concept. So we've seen secondary batteries, which have been used in electric cars in China, electric buses, and then they're recycled, hence the name secondary batteries. So they are the perfect choice for network nodes. There's also the potential for a third life (battery) use case, so they could actually be a self-contained home system in a farmer's home a decade from now. So we wanted to explore these concepts further.

"The grid in Africa will never build a kilometer of wires to cover the last mile."

To build a kilometer of wire, imagine you're spending thousands of dollars per 100 meters, and customers will spend $10 to $20 per year. So the power company will never contact these customers. Even with political pressure, because they will never be able to recoup the cost.

Therefore, these distributed energy generation and storage solutions are very important to open this market to a new world. It's so transformative because there's no connection without power. Without connectivity, you cannot bring goods and services to these farmers. I mean, for example, we're working with a group of over a hundred thousand farmers. We've seen a lot of people hitchhiking more than 100 kilometers to buy agricultural inputs, and it turns out they can take a ride in January to buy fertilizer, but they only need it in June, and their fertilizer is useless for six months. The money was underutilized to generate more interest or investment income, and then they also locked their money for six months.

It's purely because of not being able to communicate with suppliers that they need fertilizer in June or that they have cash in January because they just harvested and that's the only time they can pay because they don't have a bank or they can't get a loan.

"So our core drive as World Mobile is to open up this new world by connecting these massive numbers of users to the Internet. It's absolutely transformative stuff that changes lives."

Rather than hitchhiking, they have this fertilizer delivered to them. It will be half the price, and we will be able to promote financial inclusion through loans, crop insurance, and all kinds of goods and services available in the world. That's what we're trying to solve.

Jessica: This is so exciting! I think in 2021, even before the partnership, some key milestones have been achieved. When it comes to the next steps in the rollout, what are you particularly excited about? Are you looking forward to something that will really help take World Mobile to the next level?

"We have divided our strategy into three tiers, we will not reveal the third tier as it is still only discussed internally and it will have a big impact on the whole telecom business model."

Andrew: So currently our business model is to roll out WiFi and switch air nodes, which is how users connect to the Internet. In order to connect to these WiFi hotspots, we use different types of backup, so we don't just use a technical solution, we don't provide the network like a traditional signal tower, where within a few kilometers around, you can have good 3G or 4G coverage. This is not a business model.

“We are using all types of solutions to bring villages online at the lowest possible cost and give them the internet they need.”

If a village is just starting out, they don't need a 200mbps internet speed, and a normal internet speed will suffice. We give them what they need. Even if the internet is good enough to access a portal where they can order fertilizer and have it delivered, it's life changing.

“We realized that we are not going to launch 5G in Africa. This is not the solution that Africa needs. As a start, they just need to be able to access the network. We will build this hybrid network and provide the best solution according to local conditions.”

Jessica：marvelous! So over the next couple of years, you're going to focus more on the short term, you said the third layer is still only for internal communication. But in the next few years, when it comes to the goals or goals of World Mobile, can you identify some that you can share with us?

Andrew：We will be announcing our mission, vision and values ​​soon, and we will definitely make user acquisition a task, so over a period of time, no matter how many users we have, we will also hit our revenue goals. But I don't think it's about the network in the short term.

“It’s about building an ecosystem, which is the basis for us to scale. Right now, it’s as difficult to install one air node as it is to install a thousand.”

We're in the process of forming, we're building the team, we're contracting the vendors, and doing all these market access assessments.

"It takes time to get started in order to build the physical infrastructure, but once you start, the momentum will carry you through and you can scale exponentially."

Yes, as far as our goals are concerned, it's more about building a team. Establishing a process so that we're ready to scale in a really organized way without us having to go back six months later and start fixing issues or changing our minds.

"We get it right from the beginning and then we build the business incrementally, and then we can hit full steam ahead."

Jessica：Andrew, thank you very much, you've actually provided a lot of clarity on what's happening on the ground at World Mobile. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it goes over the next few months! It sounds like you are really busy. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with me and the rest of the community.

Andrew：You're welcome Jess, thanks for having me.