Facebook has been going through a rough few weeks. For starters, Mark Zuckerberg was recently reported to have lost $ 19 billion in mid-September.
Then, at the end of the same month, an investigation called The Facebook Files, from The Wall Street Journal. In this, a former employee of the company revealed that it is aware of the negative effect that its services generate on society and has not taken charge.
And on the other hand, last Monday both Facebook and Instagram and Whastapp went down for much of the day. In addition to affecting the millions of users around the world who use these services, the fall caused the price of the company’s shares to decrease by five percent, that is, Zuckerberg lost $ 7,000 million dollars again.
Now, to redeem itself from all the scandal, the company appears to have shown the new technologies that you’ve been helping more people get online. These are being deployed around the world by sea, land and air to ensure equitable access to high speed internet.
According to Facebook, data consumption per person increases by 20 to 30 percent each year. However, more than 3.5 billion people still do not have internet access, and if they do, it is not adequate.
That is why the company wants to bring a reliable internet connection to as many people as possible, perhaps also to balance the problems its services have caused.
Be that as it may, to achieve its mission, Facebook Connectivity and its partners have been working on a robot called Bombyx over the past few years, which can quickly install fiber optic cables over medium voltage power cables.
In that way, the robot can reduce the time and cost of implementing fiber optic internet, doing the job over the air and avoiding digging into the ground.
The robot uses advanced movement techniques, which allow it to dodge obstacles on light poles and cross a power line in just four minutes. Its stabilization mechanism, on the other hand, allows it to climb vertically without problems. In addition, it uses Kevlar fiber braided ropes, as they are resistant and more flexible.
While there have been advancements in the strength and size of a fiber strand, as well as the amount of data that a strand can carry, there is still no general solution for reducing fiber optic internet construction and application costs. That is why Facebook Connectivity has been digging into this topic and developing the robot.
“Since we first introduced Bombyx, it has become lighter, faster and more agile, and we believe it could have a radical effect on the economics of fiber deployment around the world,” the company said in its announcement.
Another technology that this implementation includes has to do with the cables that connect the world below the sea. It is Facebook’s first transatlantic submarine cable system, which will connect Europe with the United States. These modern cables are capable of providing 200 times more internet capacity than transatlantic cables of the 2000s.
Finally, the company has also mentioned a wireless technology that offers fiber optic speed internet over the air: Terragraph. According to the company, this technology “has already brought high-speed internet to more than 6,500 homes in Anchorage, Alaska. And implementation has also started in Perth, Australia, one of the most isolated capitals in the world. “
With all these technologies, Facebook Connectivity has provided high-speed internet to more than 300 million people. However, the company is not considering stopping there, as there is still more than half the world without internet. At least this kind of “face wash” of Facebook has brought benefits for those in the most remote parts of the world.
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