Facebook Goes Back to Old Technologies to Connect the Next Billion

After abandoning its plan to develop a solar-powered drone called Aquila and grounding a helicopter drone project to connect people in remote areas, Facebook has gone back to the basics, working on technologies like mesh Wi-Fi and Express Wi-Fi in partnership with equipment manufacturers and operators.
"Our team has been developing software that simplifies network management for operators and enables them to deploy mesh Wi-Fi networks along with working on new routing framework, optimised to manage 50 or potentially even more access points," Vish Ponnampalam, Wireless Systems Engineer at Facebook wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes. A mesh refers to rich interconnection among devices or nodes.
The social networking giant is running a pilot programme for mesh Wi-Fi networking in Tanzania and has also put teams to expand its Express Wi-Fi programme in Dubai, Israel and Ireland.
"The technology we are developing is pushing the boundaries of what's possible for Wi-Fi networks," Ponnampalam added.
The Express Wi-Fi initiative, that offers Internet facility through public hotspots, was first launched in five countries - India, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia.
"We're excited to continue improving the technology with the goal of sharing it with more partners around the world," said Ponnampalam.
The Express Wi-fi initiative reached India last year in partnership with telecom operator Bharti Airtel, local ISPs and over 500 local entrepreneurs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vine Successor Byte App to Launch Spring 2019, Creator Confirms

Vine, the short-form video looping app was acquired by Twitter in 2012, was converted into a pared-down camera app last year, after Twitter decided that it didn't want to invest more money into it. The app enjoyed many loyal fans, who then moved to other services - Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok. Now, creator Dom Hoffman has confirmed that its successor is on its way, and will be launched in Spring 2019. He has also confirmed that it will call the successor as Byte. Hoffman even shared the logo of the upcoming app on Twitter. Byte is expected to arrive with new features to entice users back to that forgotten 'Vine' culture. Hoffman  published  on Twitter that the new looping video app will arrive in Spring 2019, and will be called Byte. The website for the app is also live, and is taking registrations for interested customers to get notified regularly on updates. It has also started a Byte creators programme, and to become a part of it, creators will have to fill up th...
Read more

Apple Rolls Out Keyboard Service Program for MacBook, MacBook to Fix 'Sticky Key' Issues

Apple Rolls Out Keyboard Service Program for MacBook, MacBook to Fix 'Sticky Key' Issues Apple  is finally taking action on the  notorious butterfly-switch keyboard  in the  MacBook  and  MacBook Pro laptops. Apple on Friday finally admitted the issue that has been occurring with some MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards. Apple has acknowledged that a "small percentage of keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models" may have the sticky keyboard problem that users have been complaining about. Notably, affected users will get a fix for free from Apple, and anyone who has paid for a replacement keyboard or keys through Apple will be refunded for the cost of the repair. Every model listed, right from 2015's 12-inch Retina MacBook to 2017's 15-inch MacBook Pro, comes with the butterfly switch design Apple  first rolled out  with its computer revamp in 2015. Apple had created the new butterfly keyboard switch mechanism that was claimed to be...
Read more

Hotstar Announces On Air with AIB Season 3 Release Date in New Trailer

Hotstar  has announced the release date for On Air with AIB season 3 in a new trailer: it’s out September 24. The news comedy show is hosted by the  All India Bakchod  sketch quartet of Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi, and Ashish Shakya. As before, the show will release new episodes every week, though it’s unclear how many there will be given the shifting nature of the series in past years. After trying out a dual-language approach with the first season in 2015 – Bhat and Khamba in Hindi, and Joshi and Shakya in English – where two episodes tackling the same topics were released each week for a total of 20 episodes, On Air with AIB moved to a new format with its second season in 2017, releasing three episodes a week. Season 2 had 40 episodes in total. While one main episode, usually about 20 minutes in length and released every Monday, discussed topical news and dove into issues it deemed prevalent (the segment was called ‘Deep Dive’), a second shorter ep...
Read more