Shared infrastructure pushes into new regions
Shared network infrastructure is becoming a central strategy for cutting the cost of data delivery while improving reliability. Facebook reports cumulative investments of 10,000 kilometers of terrestrial fiber and 37,000 kilometers of subsea fiber through the 2Africa project, targeting faster internet for hundreds of millions of people across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific over the next five years.
A new partnership with Liquid Intelligent Technologies will add 2,200 kilometers of long-haul fiber in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), closing a missing link between East and West Africa and positioning the country as a hub for neighbors like Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. Combined with 2Africa, the route is expected to lift reliability and speeds for around 30 million people in the DRC. The work follows completion of the country's first privately held long-haul fiber path from Muanda to Matadi.
The Asia-Pacific region is also receiving fresh investment. In Pakistan, a first terrestrial fiber project with Nayatel will lay 1,700 kilometers of open-access fiber across eight cities, serving an estimated 10 million urban users. In Indonesia, Facebook is expanding its existing partnership with Alita Praya Mitra to add fiber to initial coverage areas and reach additional cities. These moves sit alongside the Echo and Bifrost transpacific subsea cable efforts.
Magma moves toward mainstream mobile deployments
Magma, the open-source packet core project first shared at MWC Barcelona in 2019, is now being integrated with AWS edge computing services. Service providers will be able to procure AWS infrastructure preinstalled with Magma through the AWS Marketplace, which is intended to accelerate 4G and 5G rollouts by eliminating licensing fees for the packet core software and reducing the cost of ownership for fixed wireless and private networks.
Magma's governance is transitioning to the Linux Foundation, with participation from the Open Infrastructure Foundation and the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance. OEM partners Baicells and Blinq are also building deeper RAN integrations with Magma to offer more flexible and open deployment options.
Evenstar expands OpenRAN supply chain
OpenRAN's economic potential is substantial. Analysys Mason estimates the technology could generate $285 billion in global GDP by 2030 in a baseline scenario where OpenRAN covers roughly half of mobile network footprint, with over $90 billion in annual gains afterward.
The Evenstar program, which develops RAN reference designs and software for 4G and 5G, is now part of Vodafone's OpenRAN deployment plan in the U.K. New supply chain partners include Baicells, Marvell, MaxLinear, and Sterlite Technologies Limited. Commercial rollouts are anticipated in Asia-Pacific and Europe in the coming months to scale adoption.
Wi-Fi tools target monetization and scale
Public Wi-Fi expansion remains costly for ISPs and mobile network operators, so Facebook has focused on giving partners better analytics and monetization levers. The Express Wi-Fi platform is now used by partners in more than 30 countries, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, and Nigeria. In Nepal, Worldlink has connected more than 1 million people since adopting the platform in 2020.
New capabilities let partners track revenue per access point, active users on daily, weekly and monthly bases, plus seven-day paid traffic and sales. Partners can also run ad campaigns in cooperation with local businesses, offering a way to offset connectivity costs and address affordability barriers for users.
Facebook Wi-Fi, aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, now exceeds 100,000 SMB deployments globally. The service has been extended to integrate with Instagram, so customers can connect using Facebook or Instagram logins and optionally check in to the business's Facebook page or follow it on Instagram. Businesses need a compatible router from OEM partners such as EnGenius Technologies or Intelbras.
Terragraph hits commercial milestone
Terragraph, the gigabit wireless technology for fiberlike speeds, has reached a commercialization milestone with licensee MikroTik launching a 60 GHz product line. The Cube 60Pro series brings Terragraph to service providers seeking fast, long-range connectivity. OEM partners, including Cambium Networks, Edgecore Networks, Radwin, and Siklu, have shipped over 20,000 Terragraph-enabled devices to more than 100 service providers and system integrators for use cases like fixed wireless access, Wi-Fi backhaul, and infrastructure links. Alaska Communications plans to deploy Cambium Networks-based Terragraph solutions in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
Facebook continues to push for delicensing of 60 GHz spectrum in additional countries and is expanding Terragraph's feature set, trialing new applications, and building out its service provider channel.
Data-driven network planning guides operator investments
Connectivity Analytics tools aggregate network data to help operators make informed decisions about building, growing, and optimizing their infrastructure. During the COVID-19 surge in South Africa, MTN leveraged these tools to study latency, coverage, and device penetration, then prioritized interventions such as caching, peering, and additional LTE features. The operator increased average download speeds by 30 percent as a result.
In Brazil, Facebook partnered with TIM Brasil to assess 325 new network sites in the Minas Gerais region, aiming to improve coverage for up to 1 million people. The analytics-driven planning allowed TIM Brasil to quickly prioritize a 4G site plan covering more than 300 communities, maximizing impact while reducing planning costs. The partners continue evaluating further regions in Brazil, with potential to connect over 3 million additional people.
Beyond the Radio: The OpenRAN Ecosystem
To fully unlock the potential of OpenRAN, the industry doesn't just need open interfaces between hardware and software; it needs an open, vibrant ecosystem around them. That's why Facebook Connectivity is investing in a range of initiatives aimed at catalyzing collaboration and innovation across the entire telecom value chain—not just for the radio hardware itself.
Expanding Access with Even More Openness
A key part of this strategy is opening up the converged reference architecture for the Evenstar product family. This is about moving beyond just the radio unit (RU) to encompass a broader set of network elements. The reference architecture now covers the distributed unit (DU), the radio unit control plane, and the near-real-time RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) for the EvenStar software. Furthermore, the Evenstar management plane stack is being contributed to the opensourcemano project. This effort is delivered through a collaboration with VVDN Technologies and Radisys, all in service of enhancing DU deployment models that fit a range of topologies and deployment scenarios.
This expanded openness helps to democratize both DU and RU choices, granting operators the flexibility to build a network exactly how they want. These reference designs are being implemented through the OpenRAN Group within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), and the latest designs are available to the TIP community for testing and validation.
Wi-Fi and Software-Driven Networks
OpenRAN isn't the only way to improve connectivity. Many service providers today rely on Wi-Fi for indoor and fixed-wireless access, so we’re also making new contributions in this area to the opensource.com project. This includes a simulation toolchain based on network slicing to help troubleshoot, test, and validate services that support new business models, particularly for OpenWiFi.
OpenWiFi is a fully disaggregated Wi-Fi software stack, broken down into an SDK, firmware, cloud controller, and gateway. The work being contributed introduces a smart feature within the platform that facilitates faster boot-up times and enhanced efficiencies, working to expedite developer time to market.
In addition to the investments in radio and Wi-Fi alternatives, we’re improving our software-defined networking (SDN) platforms with a key component already in use for even more substantial efficiency gains. We’ve already deployed the Terragraph core scheduler with its successor, TGS-2, in multiple locations, which uses artificial intelligence to deliver configuration management across its networks, yielding higher throughput and capacity in challenging environments. This technology contributes to efficiency that keeps pushing down the cost of connectivity.
Community-Driven Innovation
Agile, open, and collaborative communities are essential to meet these hardware and software challenges. To use proprietary, siloed systems would create instant roadblocks to addressing the digital divide. We believe that open innovation can have the same transformative effect on the telecom industry that it had on the computing industry—and our work with TIP is helping to turn that potential into reality.
