The social media company Facebook announced that they will be teaming up with the French satellite provider Eutelsat to launch a satellite that will bring forth internet to the Sub-Saharan Africa.
The joint project will use an AMOS-6 satellite from Israeli company Spacecom. Facebook and Eutelsat have signed a multi-year deal with the satellite provider to use its amenities and broadband capabilities.
Facebook and Eutelsat may have to sign a deal to use the same satellite, but the two companies have different reasons in leasing the AMOS-6. Eutelsat will expand its paid broadband connections in the region for businesses and well-off individuals, while Facebook aims to deliver affordable internet access to developing countries.
The joint venture of Facebook and Eutelsat is part of Facebook's Internet.org project.
In a CNN Money report, Internet.org was being criticized because of the limitations of the services people can access through the free smartphone app. At present, the app was renamed "Free Basics by Facebook" to distance the app from other projects of Internet.org.
According to a news report by the Huffington Post, Facebook also faced criticism earlier this year from human rights advocates accusing Facebook of violating the spirit of net neutrality by providing free access to a select group of websites and services. Facebook responded to the accusations by making the platform available to third-party developers, and later made it easier for more mobile operators to provide the free service in May.
This is not the first time that Facebook is going to utilize a million-dollar technological hardware to reach its goal of bringing internet to the hard-to-reach and underserved locations of the world. Last July, Facebook unveiled the development of their very own drone that can bring internet to the most isolated parts of the Earth.
The initiative of Facebook to bring low-cost, low-bandwidth internet to the world have been adopted by most of the tech giants. At present, Google is also working on its Project Loon that utilizes hot air balloons instead of drones.
