Facebook takes on global Internet bottlenecks - CNET

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Freaked out by Facebook trying to fill the skies with colossal drones beaming the Inteet at you? The social network giant offered two more down-to-earth technologies on Wednesday to dramatically improve network access across the world.

Terragraph uses high-frequency radio waves to speed up networks where populations are dense. And ARIES aims to replace the slow wireless data service that prevails today in poorer and rural areas with faster, longer-range communications that accommodate more people, too.

The company doesn't plan to build the networks itself. Instead, it'll rely on Inteet service providers and carriers, the company said.

That's probably good: a huge global industry is already working furiously on many of the same challenges Facebook is tackling here. The mobile networks that replace today's will become a $247 billion business in 2025, ABI Research expects. Facebook didn't say when it thinks the research projects will to mature into real-world services.

The projects, unveiled during the second day of Facebook's developer-oriented F8 conference, show how just how out of date you are to think Facebook is merely for keeping up with friends and family. It's become it's the home of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger communication services, the Instagram photo-sharing service, and as of Tuesday, computer-run chat bots to help businesses answer customer questions. Facebook's Coectivity Lab work on wireless networks is part of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's effort to spread Inteet access to everyone on the planet.

Zuckerberg brings a do-gooder vibe to the aspiration, but universal Inteet access also makes business sense for Facebook. The more people are online, the more they can use Facebook apps and see Facebook ads. Facebook drew controversy in February when Indian regulators rejected Free Basic, its program to offer people no-cost access to a limited number of Inteet services -- including Facebook of course.

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Facebook's highest-elevation ambition has been to coect remote locations to the Net from Aquila, a massive drone the company developed with the wingspan of a Boeing 737. Google and billionaire Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, are also working on beaming Wi-Fi signals from high-altitude balloons and satellites.

Terragraph uses a modified version of an existing but uncommon technology called WiGig or 802.11ad. It employs airwaves where radio signals vibrate at 60GHz -- nearly 100 times the frequency used to broadcast TV and coect your phone to the network. These high frequencies are great because they can carry a lot of data and are free for anyone to use without expensive govement auctions. But high-frequency radio signals also don't travel as far or penetrate walls as well, so you'll have to be closer to a Terragraph antea for it to work. Facebook thinks Terragraph base stations will be located every 200 or 250 meters.

Facebook is using the technology on its own campus and plans a trial farther south in Silicon Valley in the city of San Jose, Califoia. In the long run, Facebook hopes, the technology could be incorporated into the fifth-generation "5G" network that is expected to arrive starting in 2020 as a faster, more reliable way to coect our phones, cars, and other devices to the network.

ARIES (Antea Radio Integration for Efficiency in Spectrum) is at an earlier stage of development. It's goal called spectral efficiency: squeezing as many bits of data as possible over a given region of airwaves. That helps you cram more people onto a network, but ARIES also is designed to improve transmission distances so people in remote areas get access.

CNET staff writer Richard Nieva contributed to this report.