O Facebook announced on Wednesday a series of new connectivity technologies that will bring the African continent online and improve existing infrastructure projects in Africa and elsewhere.
Since 2013, the Facebook Connectivity helped bring more than 500 million people online to a faster internet and now, the company aims to enable affordable connectivity with its emerging new technologies.
“We've seen that economies thrive when there is an internet that is widely accessible to individuals and businesses. In Nigeria, the increase in broadband connectivity has resulted in a 7,8% increase in the likelihood of employment for people in areas connected to fiber optic cables,” comments Dan Rabinovitsj, Facebook's vice president of connectivity.
BUT: Facebook extends submarine cable to Africa and includes connection to Angola
“While increased connectivity has led to a 19 percent increase in GDP per capita in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Facebook Connectivity works with partners to develop new high-speed internet access technologies. Today we are sharing the latest developments in some of these connectivity technologies, which aim to provide major improvements in Internet capacity across the world by sea, land and air.” Dan Rabinovitsj.
Some of Facebook's new connectivity technologies include:
- Investing in improving subsea fiber optic cables and expanding their reach to connect more people:
Facebook and its partners recently launched the first 24-pair transatlantic undersea cable system that will connect Europe to the United States.
This new cable offers 200 times more capacity than 2000s transatlantic cables and is based on recent Facebook news about 2Africa Pearls , the undersea cable that connects Africa, Asia and Europe and makes the 2Africa cable system the longest in the world, with a capacity to provide connectivity for up to 3 billion people.
- Use robotics for faster fiber deployment :
“We are making fiber deployment significantly more cost-effective through Bombyx, a robot that can scale the medium voltage power lines that already exist across much of the world and install fiber on them. Today, Bombyx is lighter, faster and more agile than our first-generation design,” Facebook said in a statement.
Facebook is also making Bombyx fully autonomous, using machine vision sensors to better navigate around obstacles. Bombyx aims to make the biggest drop in the cost of deploying terrestrial fiber, combining innovations in robotics and fiber optic cable design to increase the amount of terrestrial fiber on land – without the expense of trenching to put the fiber underground .
- Terragraph - Fiber connections through the air:
Terragraph, a wireless solution that transmits fiber-like connectivity over the air, has already brought high-speed internet to more than 6.500 homes in Anchorage, Alaska, and rollout has begun in Perth, Australia.
Facebook licenses Terragraph free of charge to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). To date, these partners have shipped more than 30.000 Terragraph units to more than 100 service providers and system integrators worldwide.
