Siglo Community Connectivity Network

Our vision is to connect the rest of the world with an affordable, consistent access to the internet, at home and on mobile. We believe a new type of telco is required, taking cues from other industries that have been disrupted by making use of the "gig economy." This kind of company can scale much faster, provide jobs, and, of course, more connectivity. We have already built a micro-task economy with over 1.5m verified users in Mexico and Colombia. Since launching, they can exchange their earned digital currency for mobile top-ups from the carriers. Now we are piloting a decentralized internet service provider (ISP) model in Mexico City where users can participate and earn in the community while providing cheaper and faster home internet.

Siglo is committed to providing internet to four billion under-connected people, starting in Mexico and Colombia. 

Siglo democratizes the internet by allowing users to earn tokens by completing micro-tasks like taking surveys, uploading proof of purchase or consumption, and verifying points of interest. On a daily basis, more than 10,000 collaborators earn Siglo tokens, which can be exchanged for prepaid cell phone credit from all mobile operators in Mexico and Colombia. 

This year, Siglo is launching the Siglo Network, an internet service provider (ISP) that is run by the people and for the people. The Siglo Network will initially focus on underserved, urban communities. In emerging markets, internet is expensive and slow, if available at all, and the vast majority cannot afford a service that is adequate for today and tomorrow's increasingly demanding applications. Our collaborators earn tokens by installing and hosting edge nodes and wifi access points (WAP), selling subscriptions, collecting payments, and providing customer service. More than 50% of Siglo's subscriber revenue will be shared with our mobile workforce.

All other ISPs in the market are run by oligopolies, use outdated, centralized business models, and legacy infrastructure making innovation difficult.

Our users our empowered to build and to share in the revenue of a decentralized connectivity network! These users are largely unbanked, many live in areas where access is limited, and they all have economic challenges to stay connected on mobile and in their homes. 50% of the world's unconnected people live in urban areas. 

These families have an increasing large appetite for fast internet service, yet this appetite is largely outweighed by their economic limitations. Siglo provides a cheaper, faster service (by far), but also allows users to participate in the workforce of the network, to earn connectivity tokens, build out the Siglo Network, and even share in the profits by hosting edge nodes that are accessible by any community member.

We believe that making use of the "gig economy" and taking a cue from companies like Uber, Airbnb, Rappi, scooter companies, and others - we can build a new kind of ISP, that is decentralized, run for and by the people. In doing so, we create jobs, increase access and connectivity, and reinforce local economies.

We have already built a strong community of users who perform micro-tasks for a connectivity token that can be exchanged for more access. This same task force is being mobilized to build our own network, that will provide better service at a lower price, and often in areas that are less serviced by existing ISPs. Those large ISPs have massive workforces, overhead and are not incentivized to build out rural areas where ROI will be nonexistent.

We look at each city block in dense urban areas as MDUs, or multi dwelling units. A Siglo entrepreneur can install an edge node on their roof and share wired access with their entire block of about 50 homes. During the pilot in fall of 2019, we will use off-the-shelf technology like 60ghz antennas for backhaul. Once the model is ready to scale, we have direct access to cutting edge wireless technology (like Tarana Wireless) that can be used in our own build out, after our fixed line pilot is complete. 

The real innovation is in the decentralized model, where users can be certified installers, answer customer service inquiries, share with friends and neighbors, and even work as payment collectors. Once the pilot is complete and the model is running efficiently, we can scale exponentially, relying on our organic community workforce.

We already have an extensive and loyal user base to begin building out the fixed access network. Through our investors and advisors, we have access to telcos and companies building new 6G technology with which we can build out the Siglo Network.

Existing ISPs and mobile operators that, due to their very centralized structure, move slowly to adopt new technology and business models. They enjoy almost monopoly status, yet do not have the loyalty of the people.

With a user workforce model, we can scale very fast, and take advantage instantly of our existing user base of 1.5M.

Siglo currently has several Android apps that are built in React. These apps are used to earn tokens in exchange for micro-tasks. Tokens are on the blockchain, currently a Ropsten testnet. The beta Siglo wallet allows users to make P2P transactions and to purchase prepaid cellphone top-ups from any operator. 

This year, Siglo will begin deployment of the Siglo Network, which include wifi access points connected to edge nodes that are interconnected by mmWave links. Using the Siglo tokens, we can incentivize collaborators to host wifi access points and edge nodes, to do sales, customer service, and installations.

In 2020, we intend to launch our mainnet on an undetermined blockchain.

Since our beginning, we have given out over $600,000 in mobile credit to our users. While we believe this is significant, we have come to realize that internet connectivity, both at home and on mobile devices is still very expensive for most users in our Latin American markets. Meanwhile, an individual or home's demand for faster internet is growing much faster than their economic reach.

This is why we have chosen to begin piloting an ISP model, where we can provide a much faster and cheaper internet service to our users. How can we do it faster and cheaper?  Because we make our users part of the solution. They become the vast majority of our workforce, for installation, service, customer attention, even payment collections. This way, our overhead is much lower, and our brand loyalty and organic growth potential is much higher than any other ISP in our markets.

On the hardware side, we have partnered with Omar Bakr, founder of Tarana Wireless to help with network architecture. We may make use of Tarana equipment in a citywide build out.

We have conducted massive amounts of market research, through our 1.5M userbase to validate the need and our model. 45% of them said they want to change ISP and thousands have sent us pictures of their modems, conducted speed tests, and shared their experiences. Our initial package will be 5x faster and cheaper than the competition. An average user today has 12mbps connectivity in their home, if they have a provider.

We have had 1.5M users register and have already given out more than $600k USD in connectivity to our users, in exchange for opinions and tasks that they have performed. Increased connectivity gives them access to information, education, and more economic opportunity. By building the Siglo Network (ISP) using the user workforce (gig economy), these users get monetary benefits as well increased internet.

We are launching our ISP pilot in September 2019.

By August 2020, we will serve 145,000 homes high speed internet access.

Our current model extends to 2023, when we will be serving +5M homes, in Mexico City alone. We intend to have expanded to other key Latin American cities by the end of 2020.

Our key metrics are:
- number of Siglo access points installed. We intend to install 1000 in the next 12 months.
- the number of Siglo tokens awarded. We intend to reward 50M tokens worth $500,000 USD in the next 12 months.
- the number of people served. We intend to have 50,000 monthly subscribers to the Siglo ISP in 12 months.

Within 4 years (our current model), we plan to have over 5M monthly subscribers in Mexico City alone. We plan to be active in many other major Latin American cities by that time.

Again, with our decentralized user workforce and app driven platform, we believe we can expand rapidly, much unlike traditional ISPs.

External risks include a highly regulated telecom industry. 

We intend to make use of unlicensed spectrum (and are working with existing and new technologies to do so) that allows us to scale across markets avoiding a lot of the regulation required.

Full-time staff = 10

+ 3 other fully dedicated team members helping out in advising roles

The Siglo team has 10 full time individuals, mostly based in Mexico City. We are from 7 countries, and we all speak fluent Spanish. 

Our team is diverse and multi-disciplined. Brothers Joel and Isaac Phillips founded Siglo. Joel studied economics at Columbia, and has worked in inclusion in Latin America. Isaac is a serial entrepreneur who used to work in international telcos. Jorge Trujillo, our CTO, never finished high school, and is a self-trained, fullstack developer and hacker extraordinaire. Our chief network engineer / advisor is Omar Bakr, founder of Tarana Wireless, Phd Berkeley, MIT grad. Our chief data scientist, Paul McLachlan, has a PhD in data science from the University of California at San Diego. Our chief product officer, Alix Gallardo, used to work directly with Carlos Slim, owner of the largest mobile operator in Latin America. Serry Osmeña is marketing director, was a co-founder in a big data company known as Speedtrack, and has worked with a number of telcos and satellite providers on strategic partnerships.

The Siglo Network will be piloted in Mexico City. One of the largest and most dynamic cities in the world, Mexico City was chosen as an early market for recent unicorns Waze, Uber, Rappi, and Grin. Representative of many smaller urban markets across the region, it has proven to be an early adopting city, especially for models like these that make use of a gig economy and distributed assets.

In 2016, the Siglo app Pig.gi pitched at Google Demo Day.
In 2015, the Siglo app Pig.gi won the best startup in Mexico at the Seedstars competition

Subscriber revenue from subscribers who connect to the Siglo Network. We believe the efficiencies of an app-based, gig economy will enable Siglo to run a more efficient, cost effective telco.

We have also worked in the past to monetize consumer insights with major global brands.

We are currently restructuring the company to bring in new partners and raise addition venture funding for the new ISP pilot we are launching on our existing platform and to our userbase.

After a successful pilot, we will raise additional funds for building out Mexico City and begin looking at other key urban areas in Latin America. Our current model shows us becoming profitable around EOY 2021. 

If Siglo is selected as a Solver, the prize and resources will be used for internet infrastructure including wifi access points (WAP) and mmWave links. These will be deployed in our collaborators homes to form a community network. Some prize funding will also be spent incentivizing our community to sell subscriptions to the Siglo network.