Facebook partners with local firm to expand network coverage

Facebook has partnered with Kenyan firm, BRCK, to provide affordable internet to poor Kenyans in under connected and unconnected regions.

Through the partnership, the two firms have launched the open sourcing of Magma, a software platform that contains the tools needed to deploy and extend LTE mobile networks in under connected and unconnected areas of the world. This includes software powering the mobile packet core and network automation and management tools.

In a statement, BRCK said its 2,700 WiFi hotspots in Kenya and Rwanda confine Moja users to a radius of 50-100m, a fundamental limitation of WiFi networks. To give users wider coverage, BRCK has been piloting a low cost, solar-powered data-only LTE deployment that extends the Moja network with blanket coverage across kilometres with the potential to cover thousands of people per tower.

“Our Moja platform is the answer for affordable internet where people can’t pay to get online.  The business model allows consumers to connect to the internet for free, leveraging their digital engagement to ensure that the bandwidth is paid for. LTE allows that signal to not just work when you are within range of a Moja WiFi hotspot in a restaurant, shop or bus, but works to keep you connected wherever you are – at home, as you hustle, or on the go,” said BRCK.

“The reason this is important is that it allows rapid deployment and software development on a technology assumed to be available only to the incumbent MNO’s, and only with software and networks provided by a few behemoth suppliers (Huawei, ZTE, Nokia, etc.),” BRCK said in a statement after the deal at this week’s Mobile World Congress Barcelona,

“As we continue to expand the Moja network WiFi continues to be the tip of the spear.  It’s a great technology with lots of bandwidth, an easy connection model and a very low cost of entry. We are continuing to invest in our work providing WiFI in public transit and have recently invested in fixed access, having recently acquired the Surf network with over 1,200 existing sites,” it said.

However, BRCK noted that LTE has one great advantage: a larger footprint of coverage. It operates on licenced frequencies (although there is work being done to change this) and this allows them to use high power LTE radios to transmit a continuous Moja signal over kilometres, not metres, direct to a users device and connect many thousands of people who otherwise don’t have access to affordable internet.

The company has embraced Magma as the backbone of its LTE network. The technology is similar to a lot of the work done in the early days of BRCK building high reliability networks in resource poor settings. It distributes the compute load to the edge, allowing for better performance in resource limited settings. It uses modern web compatible APIs and communication protocols that allow us to integrate seamlessly into our existing platforms, and most importantly it breaks the reliance on legacy systems that have put scaleable LTE out of the reach of most.  Magma is also built on software defined networking, the firm said, adding its upgrade path to 5G isn’t limited by hardware or vendor lock in, just a small matter of programming.

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“We’ve done a lot of work internally to Magma and shared this back into the open source effort. We’ve built out a MEC (Mobile Edge Compute) platform, localising the Moja platform and increasing the speed to the consumer. We’ve built a network monitoring stack for our wireless backhaul links, and we’ve integrated the platform seamlessly into our WiFi offerings and mesh networks that we run. We’ve also been integrating radios from multiple vendors for different deployment scenarios as well as making Magma work with our own SupaBRCK microserver,” the statement continued.