Meta has quietly reabsorbed resources from its “Connectivity” division, the company confirmed. For nearly 10 years, this was home to Facebook’s former experimental Internet and telecoms efforts, from satellites (exploded) to drones (crashed) to apps (contested) and other more traditional infrastructure (appreciated and ongoing).
As Light Reading first pointed out, Meta Connectivity’s employees and projects, or what’s left of them after the impending budget cuts, will be split between the Infrastructure and Central Products divisions. Exactly what resources and people will remain is no doubt a matter of debate, even now, but the complete reduction in connectivity suggests that the more remote approaches to providing the Internet are probably gone for good.
The beginning of this dichotomy can probably be traced back to attempts some ten years ago to subsidize internet connections in developing countries and regions. The efforts of Internet.org and Free Basics would essentially offer Facebook and some bundled services for free in places where connectivity was expensive.
This caused a lot of controversy at the time, from people outraged that one US company thought it had to step in to fix another’s problems, to the idea that the same company would essentially control access and content in violation of net neutrality policies, and others who saw the ostensibly charitable effort as Facebook buying global market share.
In 2015, the company unveiled plans for a completely unexpected high-altitude drone called Aquila that would use lasers to connect people underneath. This ambitious effort had a rough few years, had a rough landing in 2016 and was finally permanently grounded in 2018.
Meanwhile, they went even higher than that with an early attempt at a low-Earth orbit satellite connectivity system, slated for launch in September 2016. Unfortunately…
Facebook didn’t give up, but it’s worth noting that its next satellite internet venture, a subsidiary called PointView Tech, has filed experimental FCC licensing papers in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021… but not this year. I have reached out to check in but have not heard back yet.
But not everything the Connectivity division did was successful. As they probably repeated to them every time they talked about drones and lasers, fiber backhaul and solid traditional wireless infrastructure is really needed so neglected areas can connect, just like everyone else in the world.
To this end, Meta has built new software, hardware and standards together with the Telecom Infra Project that make telecommunication networks more accessible and easier to maintain. Legacy industry dominates this space, so new entrants have a potentially high chance of making a change. For example, Meta and Google have invested in submarine cables and fiber optics for both their own use and public transport.
That said, with Connectivity breaking down for parts, it’s impossible to say what efforts will continue, be funded, and so on. We’ll be watching when the layoffs and consolidation are done and see what’s left.
