Facebook,In a fresh bid to connect nearly four billion people to Internet, Facebook on Thursday announced an open source and cost-effective, software-defined wireless access platform aimed to improve connectivity in remote areas of the world.
On Wednesday, the company announced a major step in that direction: An open source, wireless platform called OpenCellular.
OpenCellular is a software and a hardware platform that supports a variety of wireless networking standards 2G, LTE and Wi-Fi included.
It’s modular, meaning it can be upgraded to support future standards, simple to install and sturdy enough to operate in extreme weather conditions.
“We designed OpenCellular as an open system so anyone from telecom operators to researchers to entrepreneurs can build and operate wireless networks in remote places.
It’s about the size of a shoe box and can support up to 1,500 people from as far as 10 kilometers away,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.