Facebook Lays Out Blueprint For Connecting Hard-To-Reach Rural Areas (cnet.com)

Samantha Rhodes, writing for CNET: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took another step in his pet project to bring internet access to every corner of the planet. Facebook on Wednesday unveiled a platform that will give barebones connectivity to far-flung rural communities, called OpenCellular. The social-networking company will provide the skeleton for what you would need to bring cellular access, complete with open-source software that lets potential partners update and tweak the service to meet a community's needs. OpenCellular marks Facebook's latest attempt to push its goal of worldwide access, which aims to connect the last four billion people without internet access and the 10 percent of the population without cellular service. It's a priority for Facebook and Zuckerberg, even if not everyone agrees with their methods. Rather than go at it alone, this new program will rely on partners to run with the blueprints that it has drawn up.

Comments

Re:Facebook will pay carriers

[Penguinisto]

I *am* a rural Internet user. Yeah, it would be kind of nice to have a high-speed option that doesn't involve satellite lag and bandwidth caps, but damn... I'll make do with what I have if FB is the only other option. Most of us out here feel much the same: Fuck Facebook, and fuck their intrusive monetization plans. We'll do just fine without it, thanks.

Also, a thought for the city-dwellers: the lack of infrastructure such as broadband, non-well water systems, non-septic sewer, etc tends to keep people away from here. Heh - I barely get two bars of cell service on Verizon, none on any other carrier, and only get a signal on Verizon with a new (2015 or better) phone.

I kind of prefer it that way sometimes, since I moved out here to get the frig away from an increasingly overcrowded world of urban hipsters, wannabe gangsters, and McMansion-dwellers. If it means limited Internet, so be it - I'll make do, and I can do pretty well with what I do have. Netflix and Torrents are out of the question here (30 GB bandwidth cap), but that's okay with me.

If Google Fiber (or whatever) showed up tomorrow, I'd definitely look into it, but it's not really a must-have if having it means a loss of privacy.

Facebook is the new AOL

[dysmal]

Think about it. When AOL came out and got a lot of people online, most of them thought of "the internet" as whatever AOL presented to them. How many people do YOU know that think of "the internet" as whatever is on FB?

OpenBTS or WiFi?

[evilviper]

It's OpenBTS, not Facebook's new project, that developed incredibly cheap 2.5G GSM service on cheap, software defined radio hardware. That made some sense at the time, but today, why wouldn't you build your wireless network on WiFi instead?

A WiFi AP costs less than $20, and is very powerful if upgraded to OpenWRT, enabling wireless repeaters, QoS, local services, billing, and whatnot. GSM hardware (even with OpenBTS replacing most of it) is still much more expensive, is crufty and old, with security issues and overhead from a different telcom era that doesn't make sense to copy, today.

People want data more than voice, and VoIP makes the later easy over WiFi, too, with open source apps like CSipSimple integrating well with the Android dialer, logs, and contacts. The only thing traditional cellular/GSM has going for it is smooth hand-off, and circa 2008 the 802.11r (fast BSS) addresses that issue nicely.

Don't bother mentioning LTE... It's more efficient, but hardware is astronomically expensive compared to WiFi or OpenBTS, and incredibly power-hungry, too.