Yes, you heard it right. Facebook is planning to launch its own satellite and this secret plan has now revealed by Facebook itself. Their plan is to launch $500 million satellite to provide cheap or free internet access in the developing nations by 2016.
The social network has partnered with Eutelsat Communications (the French satellite provider) for beam free internet to many counties in Africa, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook has announced this news. This plan is a part of the internet.org project of Facebook, which received many criticisms in some countries because of net neutrality issues. The businesses were thinking that the plan could give Facebook and its partners some unfair benefits in the internet markets.
To provide internet in many remote areas Facebook has been experimenting and this latest plan to use Satellite technology is a part of their initiative to provide affordable internet to connect the world.
Facebook along with Eutelsat will be working with Spacecom in order to utilise its broadband payload on the AMOS-6 satellite which will be launched in 2017. AMOS-6 will offer high gain spot beams of data which will cover the East, West and the Southern parts of Africa.
Providing internet access through satellite is not new, many companies started this, but their offer is bit costly and not possible to use by most of the people in the developing countries. Besides internet-by-Satellite, Facebook is also working on giant drones in order to provide internet but that process has just started being tested.
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