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Facebook's gigabit wireless rolls out in Puerto Rico
Facebook's Terragraph WiFi technology is delivering high-speed broadband to San Juan, Puerto Rico. This week, AeroNet, Puerto Rico's internet service provider, announced a six-month Terragraph pilot meant to deliver reliable, affordable high-speed service. It's now live in and near Plaza de Armas and Plaza San Jose in Old San Juan.
Facebook and network startup Common deliver 5G broadband in California
Facebook's open-source Terragraph WiFi technology will power 5G home broadband in Alameda, California. Unveiled in 2016, the 60GHz millimeter-wave wireless tech is designed to bypass cost-prohibitive fiber-optic lines by blasting the internet through buildings along a network of short-distance cell towers. The Terragraph device itself can be attached to existing infrastructure, like a street lamp or apartment building.
Facebook and Qualcomm are bringing super-fast WiFi to cities
Facebook wants to be everywhere on the planet, even if that means building the internet itself. To that end, it recently unveiled Terragraph, a millimeter-wavelength, 60GHz wireless system that can blast the internet through buildings in urban areas. Now, its plans to use the tech just go more, well, concrete. Qualcomm will put Terragraph tech in its upcoming chipsets, paving the way for manufacturers to build 60GHz broadcast equipment. The companies plan to start running trials of the tech in mid-2019.
Facebook has big plans to bring internet to more people in rural areas
Over the past few years, Facebook has been rolling out several initiatives to bring free and cost-reducing internet to people in underdeveloped areas all around the world. That includes things like Terragraph, a millimeter-wave wireless technology that not only serves connectivity but does so in speedy form -- it runs on the same frequency as the one being tested by operators for proposed 5G cellular networks. Then there are others such as the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), a collaboration between tech industry firms to accelerate the development of internet infrastructure in rural areas. OpenCellular, meanwhile, is a low-power base station optimized for underserved regions across the globe. In order for all of these projects to be successful, though, Facebook can't do it alone.
Facebook might have a solution to its free WiFi's shortcomings
Facebook knows that a key limitation of its Terragraph gigabit WiFi system is how it falls apart over long distances. Line of sight is kind of a pain that way. So the company has devised a workaround for it with a code framework dubbed Open/R that helps nodes on the network make faster, autonomous decisions about data routing. The way the network operates is that data is transmitted incredibly quickly (by up to 7Gbps) and over short distances from one node to the next. But any obstructions in the visible path between nodes can cause the signal to degrade.
