Facebook is to launch a satellite that will provide internet access to remote parts of Africa, the social network’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced.<\/p>\n
In partnership with French-based provider Eutelsat, Facebook hope the first satellite will be launched in 2016.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to keep working to connect the entire world — even if that means looking beyond our planet,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n
The project is part of Facebook’s Internet.org project, which has come under fierce criticism in some countries.<\/p>\n
In some areas, particularly India, businesses reacted angrily to the plans saying it gave Facebook, and its partners, an unfair advantage in developing internet markets.<\/p>\n
Internet.org is experimenting with different ways of providing internet to hard-to-reach places. Recently, the company told of how it was planning to use a custom-built drone to beam down connectivity.<\/p>\n
‘Optimised for community’<\/strong><\/p>\n This latest initiative looks to use existing satellite technology to provide affordable internet access.<\/p>\n “Over the last year Facebook has been exploring ways to use aircraft and satellites to beam internet access down into communities from the sky,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.<\/p>\n “To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies.”<\/p>\n In a statement, Eutelsat said users on the ground would be able to use “off the shelf” products to access the service when it launches in the second half of 2016.<\/p>\n “The capacity is optimised for community and Direct-to-User Internet access using affordable, off-the-shelf customer equipment,” the company said.<\/p>\n “Eutelsat and Facebook will each deploy Internet services designed to relieve pent-up demand for connectivity from the many users in Africa beyond range of fixed and mobile terrestrial networks.”<\/p>\n Several companies already provide internet-by-satellite, but it is a costly option beyond the reach of most people in the developing world.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Facebook is to launch a satellite that will provide internet access to remote parts of Africa, the social network’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced. In partnership with French-based provider Eutelsat, Facebook hope the first satellite will be launched in 2016. “We’re going to keep working to connect the entire world — even if that means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":157515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-157514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/157515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}