Facebook launched OpenCellular, an open-source platform to improve connectivity in remote areas by lowering infrastructure costs. It aims to design small wireless devices and access points to deploy 2G and LTE networks more affordably. Facebook will contribute these designs to the Telecom Infra Project to equip underserved areas with connectivity. While seeking to connect more of the world and fuel its user growth, Facebook also experiments with technologies like ARIES antennas and Project Loon balloons to deliver internet services to distant areas.

1. FACEBOOK’S OPEN CELLULAR FOLLOWS FREE BASICS WITH AIM TO
CONNECT THE WORLD
Facebook’s OpenCellular is a new open-sourced platform aimed at improving
connectivity in remote areas of the world
Facebook’s mission to “connect the
world” by offering people free access to some parts of the internet with Free Basics
hasn’t worked out—at least in India where it had to pull the plug on its service
because of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) ruling on net neutrality.
But that doesn’t mean the company has stopped trying.
On Wednesday, it announced OpenCellular, an open-sourced platform aimed
at improving connectivity in remote areas of the world.
Facebook isn’t doing this out of pure altruism. Most people who use the
internet end up using some of Facebook’s services, but as newer platforms such as
Snapchat come to the fore and as usage patterns continue to shift, it continuously
needs to innovate.
“Facebook is still growing rapidly, but at some point one of the biggest
limiting factors on its ability to grow is going to be limits on the number of Internet
users. As such, it has strong incentives to get additional people online as a way to
keep its funnel of potential users growing. The Free Basics strategy is obviously part
of this, but its Internet.org efforts in general and these new connectivity projects are

2. all part of the same picture,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst, Jackdaw Research, a
US-based research firm.
OpenCellular comes in the form of a small device which can be deployed for
creating wireless networks as well as an access point for 2G networks or even
high-speed LTE networks.
Facebook will contribute OpenCellular designs to the Telecom Infra Project
(TIP), a project it announced at the Mobile World Congress in February, in which it is
working with companies like Nokia, Intel and Telefonica on equipping under-served
and un-served areas with wireless connectivity.
Facebook also has a technology dubbed ARIES, which is a set of wireless
antennas that can transmit internet services to devices that are kilometres away, as
well as drones that can do the same. Google too launched a similar initiative with
Project Loon which will deliver Internet to rural regions via balloons.
Earlier, in 2011, Facebook spearheaded a project called the Open Compute
Project, with which it works with major companies across the world, including Intel,
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Ericsson, Cisco and Juniper Networks, to modernise data
centre computing and networking hardware.
As installing traditional cellular infrastructure can be quite expensive,
widespread growth in rural areas is difficult, spurring Facebook to design in such a
way that the infrastructure costs are lowered.
“In many cellular network deployments, the cost of the civil and supporting
infrastructure (land, tower, security, power, and backhaul) is often much greater
than the cost of the cellular access point itself. By open-sourcing the hardware and
software designs for this technology, we expect costs to decrease for operators and
to make it accessible to new participants,” wrote Kashif Ali, an engineer at Facebook
in an official blog post announcing the initiative.

3. These are still very early days for OpenCellular—the company is still testing in
its labs. However, along with the other initiatives it has been launching it’s clear that
Facebook thinks it needs to shake up the telecom and networking hardware world
for a really connected world.
“I’d expect Facebook to continue to experiment with different ways of driving
growth in Internet penetration until it finds something that works, especially in a
major market like India, which has to be enormously important for Facebook given
its sheer size,” said Dawson.