Facebook Is Building Technology To Connect Billion People

For a tech giant like Facebook, connectivity is a top priority. While over a billion people already access the apps and can be termed as “well connected”, preparation has to be done to connect with the next lot of people. Hence, Facebook is developing new technologies to connect the next billion people. Here’s all you need to know about the development.

Thanks to the work of Facebook Connectivity, more than 300 Million people have access to a faster internet. In their recent newsroom update Facebook shared the latest development of these innovative technologies which can be deployed across the world by sea, land and air to ensure equitable access to high-speed internet.

Facebook believes that as the internet is becoming more pervasive in the way we live and work, the technology hasn’t kept its pace in bringing people together online. The company has cited that nearly half the world is being left behind, “either lacking adequate access to the internet, or remaining completely unconnected.”

New breakthroughs in technology are needed to solve this challenge in order to bring more people online to a faster and more reliable internet. Facebook Connectivity works with partners to develop these technologies and bring them to people across the world. Facebook says that earlier this week its engineers shared the latest developments in an event called Inside the Lab, which aims to improve internet capacity across the world by sea, land and air. Here are some of the developments stated by them: 
(Source: Facebook)

• Subsea cables connect continents and are the backbone of the global internet. Our first-ever transatlantic subsea cable system will connect Europe to the U.S. This new cable provides 200X more internet capacity than the transatlantic cables of the 2000s. This investment builds on other recent subsea expansions, including  2Africa PEARLS which will be the longest subsea cable system in the world connecting Africa, Europe and Asia.
• To slash the time and cost required to roll out fiber-optic internet to communities, we’ve developed a robot called Bombyx that moves along power lines, wrapping them with fiber cable. Since we first unveiled Bombyx, it has become lighter, faster and more agile, and we believe it could have a radical effect on the economics of fiber deployment around the world.
• We’ve also developed Terragraph, a wireless technology that delivers internet at fiber speed over the air. This technology has already brought high-speed internet to more than 6,500 homes in Anchorage, Alaska, and deployment has also started in Perth, Australia, one of the most isolated capital cities in the world.

“We believe this work is fundamental for creating greater equity where everyone can benefit from the economic, education and social benefits of a digitally connected world.” says Facebook. To know more about Facebook’s connectivity technologies and developments. Click here.