Facebook FB -1.06% has taken new steps in its quest to connect the entire world to the Internet — and to its social network.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled two new terrestrial systems built to improve the speed, efficiency and quality of Internet connectivity around the world: Terragraph for dense urban areas and ARIES for developing countries. Facebook FB -1.06% announced its two new systems at its annual F8 conference in San Francisco, attended by about 2,500 developers.
Terragraph is a 60GHz wireless system aimed at bringing high speed internet to dense urban areas. Facebook FB -1.06% is currently testing the system at its headquarters and plans to test the system soon in the city of San Jose, Calif. Facebook’s VP of engineering Jay Parikh emphasized the cost efficiency of the system at the conference. Facebook FB -1.06% said developed economies tend to be hampered by WiFi and LTE infrastructure that can’t keep up with users’ consumption of photos and video at higher resolutions. Facebook noted that alternatives such as optical fiber, which can provide hundreds of megabits up to several gigabits of capacity, are far too expensive for most countries.
Facebook said Terragraph delivers gigabit speeds to dense urban areas at a fraction of the cost of fiber by placing small boxes called nodes, made up of off-the-shelf parts, around the city about 200 to 250 meters apart on objects such as light poles. The design of the Terragraph network, which uses an antenna that can communicate over a wide area, is able to steer around obstructions such as buildings and handle Internet congestion caused by high user traffic. Facebook said it is one of the lowest cost options to achieve 100% street-level coverage with gigabit WiFi and can also be used to connect entire high-rises… read more
Source forbes.com
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