Facebook Looks to Space to Bring the Internet Everywhere.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been vying for more Facebook users in even the most remote corners of the Earth through the company’s Internet.org initiative, which aims to make “the Internet available to every person on earth.” Today it is one step closer, announcing that it has partnered with France-based communications satellite company Eutelsat Communications to use satellites to connect people in remote regions of 14 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa who are out of range of existing broadband networks. “Satellite networks are well suited to economically connecting people in low to medium density population areas,” said Monday’s announcement, “and the high throughput satellite architecture of AMOS-6 is expected to contribute to additional gains in cost efficiency.” The two companies will use the broadband capacity of the AMOS-6 satellite, which was built by the Israeli government and is operated by Israeli company Spacecom.Facebook has teamed up with a French satellite provider to broadcast a free internet connection to a dozen of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which has lowest rates of access to the internet in the world. Critics of the plan claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s initiative to offer free of charge apps, as well as Facebook, could threaten the freedom of the web, promoting services of the web giant to people. Among other projects include using solar-powered drones to beam out Internet signals to rural areas, and the set-up of the Innovation Lab to mimic real-world connectivity issues for developers to test their app’s performance.
Internet.org was founded two years ago in partnership with six companies, including Samsung and Nokia, as a technological basis for a relief in social inequality and economic barriers, by providing access to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, “basic internet” healthcare and headhunting services. The US social media giant plans to provide internet access to 14 African nations using the satellite. “I’m excited to announce our first project to deliver internet from space,” wrote CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his Facebook page. “Over the last year Facebook has been exploring ways to use aircraft and satellites to beam internet access down into communities from the sky.
The plan is to offer connectivity directly to Internet users and communities, as opposed to providing a backbone connection to commercial internet service providers. Zuckerberg unveiled in July a giant drone, which will one day, along with its fleet, be able “to beam Internet to people from the sky,” as Zuckerberg explained of the company’s mission in a Facebook post. The Indian government recently partnered with Google to introduce free wireless Internet in 400 of the country’s busiest railway stations, while Tesla head Elon Musk announced a plan in 2014 for what he called a “constellation” of satellites to provide free Internet access.
And though a United Nations commission recently pointed to “stubbornly persistent” gap between the Internet-rich and poor, Facebook thinks it can close it. Zuckerberg said Facebook will team up with with local partners “to help communities begin accessing Internet services provided through satellite.” In a statement, Chris Daniels, vice president of Internet.org, said satellites will play an “important” role in addressing the “significant barriers that exist in connecting the people of Africa.” Internet.org has come under fire, especially in India and Indonesia. Until relatively recently, internet in Kenya was largely provided by satellite through a large dish in the Rift Valley; four large submarine fiber-optic cables radically changed the way the country received the web beginning in 2009 under the acronym The East African Marine System (Teams), and now several multinational internet companies have a strong presence in the country, notably Alcatel-Lucent and Fujitsu. Tech companies see Africa as a particular challenge when it comes to Internet access because many people were never able to benefit from wired broadband service, instead moving directly to wireless Internet, the Washington Post reports.
Although Zuckerberg is promising new inventions to solve the problem of global Intenret access, the company in this case is actually taking advantage of well-understood technologies. Unlike more experimental new Internet satellite initiatives from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the startup OneWeb, which aim to deploy hundreds of satellites in low-earth orbit—roughly 100 to 1,250 miles above the earth—Facebook and Eutelsat’s project will use a traditional geostationary orbit satellite—around 22,000 miles above the planet. Not only does Facebook plan to take advantage of the mobile revolution in the developing world to democratize information, it also aims to bring more consumers into the Internet fold for companies to advertise to. Satellite services such as Zuckerberg’s could provide a much-needed stopgap solution for large parts of the continent where those slowly approaching fiber-optic cables are a long way off.
But Facebook’s Internet.org, which launched in 2013, has proved controversial, particularly in India, where activists have assailed the service for violating “Net Neutrality” rules by allowing users to access only a range of sites that partner with Facebook while blocking others. That means this new service will be bound by the same constraints—namely high latency, or the gap between sending a request to the network and getting an answer back—that limit existing satellite Internet elsewhere. The backlash led Facebook recently to rebrand the service as “Free Basics,” emphasizing that the service is intended to be an affordable way to get more users online. On the other hand, using the traditional satellites will require far less investment, since geostationary Internet delivery is a well understood problem. In an effort to speed up Internet adoption, the company has also launched efforts to partner with local telecom companies in 17 countries, the Post reports.
Plus, a single geostationary satellite can cover a much larger geographic area than a low-earth orbit satellite, so far fewer satellites are needed to deliver service.