Facebook working on mesh Wi-Fi for developing countries

Facebook still hasn't given up to bring Internet to underserved areas in the world. The company has recently announced it's developing software in Boston to manage networks more easily and enable operators to deploy mesh Wi-Fi networks as part of its Express Wi-Fi initiative.

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes. A mesh refers to rich interconnection among devices or nodes.

"Our team has been developing software that simplifies network management for operators and enables them to deploy mesh Wi-Fi networks along with working on new routing framework, optimised to manage 50 or potentially even more access points," Vish Ponnampalam, Wireless Systems Engineer at Facebook wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Express Wi-Fi was initially available in five countries: India, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Indonesia. It launched in 2016 as a way for local ISPs and business people to sell and provide internet service in developing countries.

For years Facebook has been trying to bring the internet to places where it's hard to get online. There are almost four billion people that are offline at the moment, and Facebook sees it as a huge opportunity to grow its market.

A few months ago, the company announced it is abandoning the Aquila project, which tried to use high-flying drones to deliver internet. Instead, it will partner with other companies that develop high-altitude aircraft to do that.