Facebook first unveiled its plans to build a 37,000-kilometer cable, called 2Africa, in 2020, and announced spread last month. It is expected to be completed by 2023 or 2024. This new transatlantic project will provide 200 times more power than the water cables originally laid in the early 2000’s.
Its recent announcements are not limited to Africa or other markets are coming. The Bombyx robot can be sent to any electrical outlet, as it uses pre-built power lines; and Facebook estimates that 30,000 Terragraph units have already been set up in Anchorage, Alaska, and Perth, Australia, elsewhere.
Bombyx looks good, until the robots go. When the technician puts it on the power line, it rotates around the line, and wraps itself around the cable as it goes, destroying the Kevlar reinforcing fiber (both strong and resistant to the heat of the central power lines). With a certain amount of time required for the bot to be in line, the Facebook group says it has redesigned the bot to make it lighter, stronger, and stronger. And it lowered the bottle from 96 fiber optic cables to 24, realizing that a single fiber could provide online access to 1,000 homes in a nearby area.
To put it bluntly, Facebook has not reconnected the power cables; they have come up with a plan to drive them to the surface of the ground, using existing electronic devices, instead of digging down canals. And it has found a way to do this independently, by building a robot that is said to eventually be able to “set up a mile of thread and pass a few independent obstacles in an hour and a half.”
Regarding Terragraph, Facebook’s Rabinovitsj and Maguire described Terragraph as a machine made up of several technologies. It depends on the 802.11ay standard set by the WiFi Alliance. It is a state-of-the-art technology, developed in collaboration with Qualcomm. It is also a Wi-Fi hotspot that uses points on existing roads, such as lighting fixtures and lights. As a result, he says, several gigabit speeds are equivalent to the speed of fiber lines – but in the meantime, they are spreading across the air.
“This means that anyone can use this without having to go and get a license from the supervisor,” says Maguire. “That’s why it makes it so cheap, and it’s one of the other innovations.”
Complaints From Human Rights Defenders
Facebook is not wise to try to use existing infrastructure and reduce operating costs when it comes to making fiber. But what the company did in the first place to connect with other people has been getting telecoms and human rights activists. Some have accused the company of building a two-part network which can widen the existing gap.
In an interview, Rabinovitsj, who heads Facebook communications, emphasized that Facebook is not a network provider and does not want to be one. He also said the company does not want to make money from the project and is licensing others for free. He acknowledged, however, that Facebook benefits from sharing information around the world, and that everyone with digital assets also benefits.
Peter Micek, attorney general of Access Now – who had recently received a Facebook subscription from RightsCon – says that in the last four years, the amount of fiber available online has been suspended, which is “not good.” at prices needed to bring the next billion people to the internet anytime soon.