Facebook to provide Africa with free internet via satellite

Eutelsat and Facebook are going to set up a satellite network together to provide more Africans with broadband internet. In the second half of 2016, the network should be active in more than fourteen African countries.

Eutelsat announced this in a press release. Facebook and Eutelsat have signed a several-year deal with Spacecom to use the full broadband payload of the Amos-6 satellite. With the high gain spot beams on board the geostationary satellite, large parts of West, East and South Africa could be provided with internet. The two companies will set up their own system of gateways and terminals to utilize the satellite capacity.

The capacity of the satellite network is shared between Eutelsat and Facebook. The French communications specialist is already active with satellite internet aimed at professional users in Africa and wants to expand its services. Facebook will use the capacity for its Internet.org initiative, which aims to bring free internet services to remote areas. More than a billion people worldwide already have access to the initiative’s ‘basic services’, according to Facebook. Last year, Facebook already announced that it also wants to use internet drones for this.

At the beginning of this year, Spacecom and SpaceX entered into an agreement for the launch of the satellite. The Amos-6 will be launched into space in the fourth quarter of 2015 with a Falcon 9 rocket. Incidentally, SpaceX itself also has plans to set up a large-scale satellite network for internet access.