Interview: BlockMesh founder and CEO Bjorn Dingemans

Loading player...
In this episode, Duncan McLeod is joined on an Internet call by Bjorn Dingemans, founder and CEO of BlockMesh, a Somerset West-based start-up that wants to create what it calls “the world’s first decentralised, cost-free communications network”.
BlockMesh, which ran an initial coin offering earlier this year to raise capital, even plans to pay its users in a cryptocurrency called mesh tokens just for using the technology.
The company, which plans to sell key ring-sized hardware devices that utilise low low-frequency spectrum and cut out traditional cellular networks and create city-wide mesh infrastructures, intends focusing on the broad African market, where communication is often unaffordable and where existing networks are sometimes poorly developed.
In the podcast, Dingemans explains how the technology works and why it’s been tied to a cryptocurrency. The plan is to allow users easily to cash out their mesh tokens into fiat currency. BlockMesh hopes to have its first devices on sale later this year, and to make them available via retail partners and via its own online shop.
Dingemans also talks about BlockMesh’s planned application programming interface for developers, its plan to integrate advertising into the platform (users will be able to opt in or out of this), and how it is applying security rules to keep users safe.
It’s a fascinating local start-up and a great discussion. Don’t miss it!
15 Jun 2018 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Frogfoot sees bigger fibre deals coming

Frogfoot plans to keep buying smaller fibre network operators in South Africa’s suburbs as the market consolidates, but CEO Shane Chorley stopped short of ruling out a sale of the business. “I’d be ignorant to say that we would ignore any offer,” Chorley said on the latest episode of the…
8 Oct 40 min

Meet the CIO | Vodacom’s Mohamed Sami on the agentic future

Mohamed Sami, group chief information officer at Vodacom, says autonomous AI agents that resolve customer problems without handing them to a human are the next big shift in customer experience – and that it is closer than many think. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you…
5 Oct 44 min

TCS | Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret…
1 Oct 28 min

TCS | Dominic White and Adam Ely on AI agents going rogue

AI agents are no longer a thought experiment for security teams. They are breaking out of test environments, hacking real companies and, according to one of our guests, already going rogue inside large businesses. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen talks to Dominic…
29 Sep 1 hr 26 min

TCS | Octotel’s Trevor van Zyl on the fibre merger question

Octotel CEO Trevor van Zyl joins the TechCentral Show to talk about where South Africa’s fibre market goes next – including a potential merger with MetroFibre Networx. Van Zyl told TechCentral that Octotel and MetroFibre Networx are assessing a combination that would create the country’s third-largest fibre network operator, with…
16 Sep 25 min