Facebook has announced new Connectivity technologies aimed at bringing the next billion people online and enhance existing infrastructure projects.
Since 2013, Facebook Connectivity has helped bring more than 500 million people online to a faster internet. The company now aims to enable affordable, high-quality connectivity for the next billion people with emerging technologies.
Facebook’s new connectivity technologies include the following.
1. Investment in improving subsea fiber optic cables. Facebook and its partners recently launched the first-ever transatlantic, 24 fiber pair subsea cable system which will connect Europe to the U.S.
2.Using robotics for faster fibre deployment. We are making fiber deployment significantly more economical through Bombyx, a robot that can climb the medium voltage power lines that already exist in so much of the world, and install fiber onto them. Bombyx is currently lighter, faster, and more agile than our first generation design. Bombyx aims to make the single biggest drop in the cost of terrestrial fiber deployment by combining innovations in the fields of robotics and fiber-optic cable design to increase the amount of terrestrial fiber on land.
3. Terragraph. Fiber connections through the air- Terragraph, a wireless solution which beams fiber-like connectivity through the air, has already brought high-speed internet to more than 6,500 homes in Anchorage, Alaska and deployment has started in Perth, Australia. To date, these partners have shipped more than 30,000 Terragraph units to more than 100 service providers and system integrators around the world.
Commenting on the new connectivity technologies, Dan Rabinovitsj, VP of Facebook Connectivity said, “We have seen that economies flourish when there is widely accessible internet for individuals and businesses. In Nigeria, increased broadband connectivity resulted in a 7.8% increase in the likelihood of employment for people in areas connected to fiber optic cables. While increased connectivity led to a 19 percent increase in GDP per capita in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”