The fight to bring the entire planet online has reached new extremes. On one hand, we have Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Internet.org, the non-profit he founded to bring the developing world online through drone and satellite technology. On the other, we have Google, which is spending millions to acquire its own drone and satellite operations while also working to stream internet access from high-altitude balloons.
And then there's Kosta Grammatis.
Though far from the most formidable entrant in this race, the young entrepreneur is no less serious about his mission. As founder and CEO of a non-profit called A Human Right, Grammatis has since 2009 been developing a variety of projects to expand internet access around the world. In 2010, he launched BuyThisSatellite.org, which sought funding to purchase a satellite that could beam internet connections to those without them. Two years later, MoveThisCable.org successfully lobbied a telecom company to reroute an underwater fiber optic cable so it could bring the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena online.
Now Grammatis is on to what may be his most ambitious project yet.
Oluvus, his latest startup, is a new kind of telecom that hopes to make money by giving away---yes, for free---internet access in the US and use any profits to support connectivity projects in the developing world. It plans to use the "freemium" model, where you give away basic services and encourage people to pay for additional stuff. The idea is that this will be successful enough to bootstrap a whole new online universe on the other side of the globe.
It's a lofty---potentially impossible---goal. But what Grammatis lacks in money and size, he makes up for in good intentions. After all, both Facebook and Google also see massive business opportunities in expanding the internet and, therefore, their own services. Grammatis, on the other hand, is unlikely to get rich from this. His motivation is purely altruistic, stemming from a fundamental belief that access to the internet is, quite simply, a human right. "I'm a strong believer that people are responsible for their own plight in some ways," he says. "And if you give them the right tools, they can help themselves."
Grammatis first became interested in connecting the unconnected world while participating in a think tank called Palomar 5. The goal of the think tank was to build technology to address some of the world's biggest problems. Over time, the group agreed that many of these challenges, from gender inequality to education to freedom of expression, could be improved with greater access to the Internet, and its vast wealth of information. "We realized how people around the world, and I'm talking about in America too, benefit from knowledge and are empowered by information, so they can start to solve those problems, themselves," he says.
At first, Grammatis, who worked as an engineer for SpaceX before launching A Human Right, wanted to design a satellite system for the developing world, but quickly realized that would be a multi-billion dollar endeavor. It would be cheaper, he believed, to bid on the Terrestar-1 satellite that was auctioned after its parent company went bankrupt. He knew other bankrupt companies had sold their satellites for pennies on the dollar. In the end, however, BuyThisSatellite.org cobbled together just $67,096, a mere sliver of the $1.375 billion Dish Network paid to acquire Terrestar-1.
Still, Grammatis was undeterred. In 2012, he started a project called the Bandwidth Bank, an attempt to get major telecom companies to donate their unused bandwidth to those who could use it. "A little known fact about internet access is there's plenty of unused connectivity," he says. "Spectrum's a public thing. It should be available for people to use if it's not being used."
>'I'm a strong believer that people are responsible for their own plight in some ways. And if you give them the right tools, they can help themselves.'
But the project was a failure. "It almost killed me," Grammatis admits. Telecom companies were largely unreceptive to the idea. And yet, that failure is what led Grammatis to launch Oluvus. "I had worked with so many telecom companies, and it was such a challenge to get anything to happen to make this vision of internet as a public good come to life," he remembers. "I started thinking: 'What would my dream telecommunications company look like?'"
Oluvus, he says, is the embodiment of that dream. The startup, still very much in its conceptual phases, is not building its own infrastructure. Instead, Oluvus is essentially buying bandwidth wholesale from an established telecom company (Grammatis can't publicly announce which one just yet). It will then offer free mobile data plans to people in the US, giving customers the option to pay more for additional services.
Profits will fund connectivity projects that can improve gender equality, education, disaster relief, health, and freedom of expression around the world. The first project will take place in Kenya's Dadaab Refugee Camp. Grammatis hopes that aligning Oluvus with a cause will help distinguish it from what many believe to be a greedy telecommunications industry. "It's a provider, but it's also a cause," he says. "We think our customers will be excited to be part of a community, not just a customer."
According to Ben Goldhirsh, co-founder and CEO of the media company GOOD and an investor in Oluvus, it's a smart marketing strategy. "If Kosta wasn't an intention-driven dude and was just a financially motivated business guy, I think he might have arrived at this strategy anyway to cut through the marketing clutter," he says.
That said, even Goldhirsh admits there are substantial challenges ahead. Even if you don't own the infrastructure, starting a new telecom company is a huge endeavor. Building consumer awareness about Oluvus, for one, likely will cost millions. So far, the startup raised $250,000 to prove its feasibility, and Grammatis is looking to raise more. Plus, Goldhirsh points out, Oluvus will be highly dependent on whatever telecom it partners with. "Anytime your business stands between another creator and the consumer, it's exciting because you don't have to execute a lot of the components yourself," he says. "But at the same time, there's a lot to the value proposition that you don't control."
That goes without mentioning that Oluvus's very mission depends on customers opting to pay for the service, rather than get it for free. Even if Oluvus does land paying customers, the most likely scenario is not that it will become the next big telecom juggernaut, but that it will become an example for other players, like Facebook and Google, who have the financial and technological brawn to scale these projects. "If he is able to demonstrate a successful working model, Facebook may say: 'Instead of us doing all this research, let's have Kosta help us,'" says Amir Dossal, an Oluvus advisor who spent 25 years at the United Nations before launching the Global Partnerships Forum.
Grammatis, for one, says he's spoken with both Internet.org and Google and would love to collaborate on a project. He says doesn't care who ultimately gets credit for bringing the world online. What's important is that it gets done. "You can give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime," Grammatis says. "But give the man the internet, and he can teach himself to fish and anything else he wants to do."
