Deutsche Telekom “extremely proactive” on blockchain compared to other telcos | Strategy and change

by Arthur · October 6, 2022

Nese Ozler, director of Group Partnering and Devices at Deutsche Telekom, singled out his employer as potentially a significant blockchain player, and one that is continually looking for partnerships and strategic investments to accelerate the pace of crypto innovation.

“We already manage crypto-assets for leading blockchain players worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Deutsche Telekom is extremely proactive compared to other telcos when it comes to getting started, which I personally think is very important in [blockchain] room.”

Ozler.

Ozler paraded Deutsche Telekom’s blockchain products and expertise at a recent conference in New York City hosted by the Helium Foundation, which promotes Helium’s decentralized blockchain network.

«leading blockchain players” referenced by Ozler, which uses Deutsche Telekom’s infrastructure services to manage its crypto assets, were Celo, Flow and Polkadot. A fourth player, Ethereum Network, was also on her list (although this partnership was not officially announced when she gave her presentation in NYC).

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Ethereum validation

As with the blockchain networks of Celo, Flow and Polkadot, Deutsche Telekom – through its subsidiary T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS) – will run validator infrastructure services for Ethereum, described by Germany’s incumbent as “second largest blockchain in the world“. The biggest, in terms of cryptocurrency value, is Bitcoin.

Validation services are mostly used to verify the veracity of transactions and play a role in governance. In the case of Ethereum, T-Systems MMS offers ‘validator nodes’ to support ‘proof-of-stake’ (PoS) and the use of cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) as a means of payment for transactions.

To this end, the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary works in partnership with StakeWise “floating staking pool”, which apparently allows users to keep their ETH tokens without having to service validator nodes themselves. The entry barrier for investments in cryptocurrency, Ethereum claims, has thus been lowered.

“ Our collaborator StakeWise collects individual Ether tokens from many different owners and merges them into validator nodes. These validator nodes are delivered and operated as infrastructure by T-Systems MMS. Deposited Ether tokens remain available to their owner in this construct – floating – and can be used in other decentralized finance applications. “

Dirk Röder, Head of Blockchain Solutions Centre, T-Systems MMS.

Speaking up telco blockchain credentials

Ozler claimed that it was “not too late for our industry to become a player in this field“, and that telecommunications companies should explore several different business models round “decentralized infrastructure“. PoS in blockchains, she added, was little more than a “modern extension of traditional telecom infrastructure services”, and that it was important – at least for Deutsche Telekom – to become part of different blockchain ecosystems in their “early phases”, to take a bite out of what could be a very large crypto pie.

She noted in her presentation that it took 28 years because the number of internet users reached the five billion mark, and that the growth trajectory in the number of crypto users was similar to internet use in the early years. However, Ozler expects an Internet-exploding growth spurt. “In my honest opinion, it will be much faster for crypto to reach the five billion mark as the world becomes more digitally savvy“, she added.

Helium rises

With a nod to the Helium Foundation hosts, Ozler noted that the Telekom Innovation Pool, a Deutsche Telekom investment fund, had “strategically invested in Helium Network to observe and evaluate the impact of decentralized infrastructure models, especially from the network infrastructure build-out perspective“.

To be strictly accurate, perhaps, TIP invested in blockchain-based IoT network operator Nova Labs, which is the corporate entity behind Helium Network, a blockchain-based LoRaWAN network that currently boasts almost a million hotspots.

It has seen massive growth since the start of 2021, when it only had 10,000 hotspots. Users invest in a hotspot, connect it to a home network and earn Helium crypto token to enable data traffic passage and secure the network.

Nova Labs announced last month a five-year agreement with T-Mobile US. The collaboration allows everyone who subscribes to Helium mobilea 5G crowdsourced network, to access both Helium’s 5G network and T-Mobile’s wireless network throughout the US.