Facebook has announced new connectivity technologies that will bring the next one billion billion people online and enhance existing infrastructure projects.
Some of Facebook’s new connectivity technologies include investment in improving subsea fibre optic cables and expanding their reach to better connect more people.
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Facebook and its partners had recently launched the first ever transatlantic, 24-fibre pair subsea cable system which will connect Europe to the US. This cable provides 200 times more capacity than the transatlantic cables of the 2000s and builds on Facebook’s recent news about 2Africa Pearls, the subsea cable which 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 three billion people.
The new connectivity technology also involves using robotics for faster fibre deployment as Facebook is making fibre 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 fibre onto them.
Also, Terragraph, a wireless solution, which beams fibre-like connectivity through the air, has brought high-speed internet to more than 6,500 homes in Anchorage, Alaska, while deployment has started in Perth, Australia.
Facebook licensed Terragraph for free 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 around the world.