Helium is stepping into Brazil—boldly and with the kind of partnership that signals a new phase for decentralized wireless. Announced live at Solana Breakpoint, the company revealed a joint venture with São Paulo–based Mambo WiFi, a leader in large-scale WiFi deployments with more than 40,000 access points across the country. The mission: bring Helium’s people-powered mobile coverage model to millions of Brazilians and accelerate the network’s global expansion.

But this announcement wasn’t the only headline. Helium also unveiled its new International Waitlist, inviting communities and organizations worldwide to raise their hands and bring the network to their own markets. For a project that’s already disrupting the traditional carrier playbook, this marks a very intentional pivot into global scale.

Why Brazil — and Why Now?

Brazil is a fascinating case study for connectivity. It’s the largest country in South America, yet more than half the population remains under-connected. Over 100 million Brazilians still rely on shared or public Wi-Fi as their primary method of getting online. For a nation with rapid digital adoption and a huge appetite for mobile data, the coverage gap remains glaring.

This is exactly the type of environment where Helium thrives.

The Helium Network today has over 120,000 Hotspots across the U.S. and Mexico, powering connectivity for nearly 2 million daily users. Instead of relying solely on carrier-owned towers, Helium flips the model by letting everyday people and businesses deploy small devices—Hotspots—that act like mini cell towers. They extend coverage, offload data for carriers, and build a distributed network at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Now imagine that model applied to a country where Wi-Fi is already a lifeline and where there’s a major push to close the connectivity gap. Brazil is not just a “next step” market for Helium—it’s arguably the perfect use case.

What Mambo WiFi Brings to the Table

Mambo WiFi isn’t a small niche provider. Their 40,000 access points sit inside shopping centers, airports, smart city deployments, and major enterprises across the country. Their platform handles authentication, WiFi marketing, analytics, and compliance—basically everything that makes public Wi-Fi usable, safe, and monetizable.

This footprint offers Helium an unusually strong foundation. Instead of starting from scratch, the network can integrate into infrastructure that already supports Brazilian telcos today.

As Helium’s GM of Network Mario Di Dio put it:

“Together, we’re tackling the telco market in Brazil and pioneering a new model where people-powered networks deliver affordable, reliable coverage at scale.”

From Mambo’s perspective, the partnership accelerates what they were already doing: transforming Wi-Fi access into something smarter, more flexible, and more widely available. CEO Katie Angelo Pierozzi emphasized that their infrastructure will help carriers adopt this new people-powered model and finally address Brazil’s long-standing connectivity gap.

How People-Powered Coverage Changes the Carrier Landscape

The cost of expanding traditional telco infrastructure remains one of the biggest barriers to universal connectivity worldwide. Towers are expensive, slow to build, and often unprofitable in sparsely populated or low-income regions. Helium’s model—thousands of small, inexpensive hotspots deployed by individuals and businesses—attacks that bottleneck directly.

This model gives carriers three major advantages:

• Rapid expansion into underserved areas
• Lower infrastructure costs
• A new way to offload mobile data without adding more cell towers

With Brazil’s carriers already familiar with Mambo’s platforms, Helium becomes far easier to adopt at scale.

International Waitlist: A Signal of Global Intent

With the Brazilian rollout announced, Helium also opened its International Waitlist, making it possible for communities, carriers, and governments to express interest in deploying the network. This is more than a sign-up form—it’s a roadmap mechanism. Helium will prioritize regions where demand, readiness, and local partnership potential are highest.

For countries struggling with rural coverage, urban congestion, or telco concentration, this could represent a very real alternative path forward.

Conclusion: Helium Is Surfing the Same Wave as Global Open Networks — but With a Stronger Community Advantage

Helium’s Brazil expansion sits comfortably within a larger global shift: open, shared, and alternative networks are going mainstream. Initiatives like Meta’s Express Wi-Fi, Google’s Aerial Fiber experiments, and even Starlink’s rural deployment push all point toward a future where connectivity is no longer delivered by a small set of incumbent operators alone. Reports from the GSMA and ITU have repeatedly highlighted the need for cost-efficient, community-backed infrastructure models to close global coverage gaps.

Compared to these players, Helium’s strength is clear: community deployment combined with carrier partnerships. It’s a hybrid model that neither purely decentralized networks nor traditional operators have been able to replicate effectively. Bringing Mambo WiFi into the equation gives Helium something even the big tech-backed initiatives often lack—local operational expertise, installed infrastructure, and carrier trust.

If the Brazil rollout succeeds—and the ingredients are certainly lined up—it will likely become a blueprint for how decentralized networks scale internationally. And for the rest of the world watching through Helium’s newly opened waitlist, this is a moment that could reshape expectations of what affordable, accessible connectivity looks like.