After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, residents along the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts completely lost power. Aaron Huslage realized that phone and internet service had become necessities, and he was part of a team that built a wireless network to cover more than 150,000 people with service.
Huslage continued to recognize this need over the years—most recently in October of 2023 with the onset of the Israel-Gaza war, which has stranded many journalists and aid workers without reliable connectivity. In response to the problem, Huslage put the pieces in place for his tech startup, Celestic. The solution was an eSIM, which is software inside a phone that can connect to any country’s internet service.
But, while this fixed part of the problem, Huslage didn’t think it was enough. The next step was to create private mobile networks for places where there is no connectivity at all, often an issue in remote parts of the world.
To use Celestic’s private mobile network and gain access to 4G LTE coverage, a user will just need to connect a portable satellite to a battery.
“Setting this stuff up has been historically really difficult, but we’re making it really easy,” said Huslage, CEO and Co-Founder of Celestic.
Celestic, which Huslage set up in Durham, is a part of CED’s GRO Incubator, a 12-week program for early-stage startups. Huslage said GRO has provided his company with a larger network and has helped refine the product idea. While Huslage has worked on startups before, he said he didn’t do them well, and he has learned a lot from the program so far.
On June 27, Huslage’s team members, who work from the United Kingdom and several locations across the U.S., will be joining him in Durham for GRO’s demo day.
Meanwhile, Celestic is conducting beta testing for the eSIMs in the United Kingdom, Israel, Kenya, Brazil and the Philippines. In the next few months, the private mobile network will be piloted in Malawi, and in that same time span, part of the Celestic team plans to travel to Nairobi, Kenya to speak with aid organizations about the startup’s offerings.
Product launch is expected by October of this year.
Celestic is targeting the aid and media sectors with a B2B model, and Huslage said there are not other mobile companies that tailor to the needs of those industries. This is why, for example, journalists without adequate internet connection are often unable to file stories or upload videos.
“There’s a good opportunity here, but there’s also an opportunity to do good at the same time,” Huslage said.
The eSIM cards are sold for $1500 each for global access, and they can be accessed by scanning a QR code to download the software on a phone. There is not yet a price set for the private mobile networks.
Some of the biggest problems with internet connectivity for the aid and media sectors are the lack of reliability and security, even where service is available. Celestic’s products have added security features to ensure aid workers’ and journalists’ information is safe.
Huslage said having safe and secure internet access will hopefully lift the burden off of aid and media workers, ensuring they don’t have to worry about their connections as they go about doing their jobs in various places across the world.
“We’ve unlocked a big set of possibilities for them, that they didn’t know could happen.”
