Google has spent several years building out high-speed fiber-optic Internet services in several U.S. cities. Now Facebook is developing technology to deliver broadband at similar speeds over the air.
The social network has built a small prototype wireless network on its campus in Menlo Park, California, that can serve data at speeds of over one gigabit per second—matching the speed of Google Fiber and nearly 100 times that of the average U.S. broadband connection. Facebook will start operating a larger-scale test network in downtown San Jose later this year, and similar trials will take place in other cities around the world.
“We’re going to be able to use this high-capacity urban Wi-Fi solution to bring more people online affordably,” said Jay Parikh, head of infrastructure and engineering at Facebook, at the company’s F8 conference today.
Parikh said that fiber networks like Google’s are too difficult and expensive to roll out in urban areas for them to reach every city dweller, even in most developed countries. Wireless infrastructure should be cheaper and easier to deploy, he says.
Facebook’s project, dubbed Terragraph, is built around an emerging wireless technology called WiGig, which is being developed for future gadgets from companies such as Samsung, Intel, and mobile chipmaker Qualcomm (see “A Speedy Wireless Protocol Is Coming to Many Gadgets”).
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