Facebook To Beam Internet For Africans Through Space Satellite

Facebook will be launching an Israeli satellite to help billions of people in the sub-Saharan Africa to access Internet. This will be a part of Internet.org initiative and to be implemented partnering with Eutelsat.

In an official blog post CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes this is the first project under Internet.org to provide Internet access from space. Until now the network infrastructure of the initiative have been working on projects like drones and laser communication system.

The geostationary satellite of the partnership is called AMOS-6 and it is being built by Israel Aerospace Industries. It is operated by Israel’s Spacecom company in partnership with Eutelsat Communications of France. It will be launched early next year on Falcon 9 rocket developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The satellite will offer free Internet in major parts of East, West and Southern part of the continent to access pared-down web services for healthcare, education, agricultural information and job listings.

From the deal Spacecom is said to be earning about $100 million. The satellite will operate for 16 years and to cost about $300 million. It is said to be insured for $330 million.

Earlier, in June this year, Facebook opened an office in Juhannesburg, first in the continent.