With Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of a new project on Monday, Facebook will be working with Internet.org to deliver internet to remote regions in Africa from space. Sounds awesome, right?
“As part of our collaboration with Eutelsat, a new satellite called AMOS-6 is going to provide internet coverage to large parts of Sub-Sahatan Africa,” Zuckerberg said in his post. “The AMOS-6 satellite is under construction now and will launch in 2016 into a geostationary orbit that will cover large parts of West, East and Southern Africa. We’re going to work with local partners across these regions to help communities begin accessing internet services provided through satellite.”
I’m excited to announce our first project to deliver internet from space. As part of our Internet.org efforts to connect…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, October 5, 2015
Two-thirds of the world is not connected to the Internet, and Facebook wants to change that. They are working with Internet.org on a variety of projects that will help provide “free basics” to countries where Internet access is not prevalent.
“We’re going to keep working to connect the entire world—even if that means looking beyond our planet,” Zuckerberg said.
The Guardian reported that satellite services like these could help parts of Africa where fiber-optic cables are long from being implemented. Looks like Facebook is continuing to do big things.