Facebook claims its new robot can reduce the cost of Fiber deployments by a fraction

The company also said that it has invented a new robot called Bombex, which moves along power lines and wraps fiber cables over them. The company said in a blog post, “Since we first unveiled Bombyx, it has become lighter, faster and more agile, and we believe it can have a revolutionary impact on the economics of fiber deployment around the world.” Is.”

Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mike Schroepfer said the robot could be the “single biggest drop” in the cost of fiber deployment because the robot brings fiber deployment down to “a fraction of the (current) cost”. He also claimed that Facebook’s work in the subsea cable space would triple the total amount of internet bandwidth in Africa.

Along with a millimeter-wave-based connectivity initiative called Terragraph, Bombex and the new cable are part of Facebook’s investment in global connectivity. Bombex is a method of aerial fiber deployment. Fiber lines are also deployed underground and under the sea, which Bombis is not designed for.

“Since underground construction is significantly more expensive than aerial construction, electricity infrastructure is almost exclusively aerial outside city centers and affluent communities. To reduce the cost of using the electrical grid and deploying fiber, That’s why we chose to focus on aerial fiber manufacturing,” the company said in a blog post in July.

Bringing more people to the Internet is essential for companies like Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from collecting user data for advertising purposes. Google has a project called Tara, which uses Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) technology, which the company originally developed under Project Loon, to beam the Internet to remote areas using hot air balloons. was planned to be used.

Facebook said Tara is a point-to-point solution, while its TeraGraph technology is point-to-multipoint, so it creates a more “resilient mesh.” FSOC technology requires a clear line to transmit one to 20Gbps plus broadband internet. pointing to another.

Apart from this, the social media giant also said that it is working on a floating buoy, which can power repeaters from the middle of the ocean. At present, Internet operators install repeaters along the coast to amplify the signal. The amount of power that can be delivered to repeaters is an integral part of the capacity of the Internet’s subsea cable system.

Facebook said it is exploring wave energy converters and solar panels for buoys and claims the solution will eventually scale from 0.5 petabit per second to 5 petabit per second.