My recent visit to Facebook for the TIP Summit and its Relevance

Early this year, during the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Facebook announced the creation of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).  TIP is an engineering focused initiative led by Facebook to disrupt the telecommunications industry with open source software and hardware.  The idea is to bring together operators, manufacturers and other industry members in a joint effort to possibly standardize much of the telecom industry under the open software ideals.

Facebook has been involved in the connectivity arena for quite a while.  From Project Aquila, which pursues the idea of beaming Internet from a high flying wing drone to the more recent Terragraph Project which objective is to provide Wireless Gigabit in urban environments.  Facebook spear heading the TIP provides the needed momentum in the industry tho think outside the box and both provide connectivity to the unconnected as well as improve connectivity to the connected.

Quickly acknowledging the need for such an initiative, we decided to join the effort as a Operator Member.  Thus since March 2016 AeroNet is part of the TIP initiative.  Later during summer the first TIP Summit was announced to be held at Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley during November.  I quickly booked my flight  and was exited about this new opportunity.

Reaching the Facebook campus, I have to say that I felt somewhat overwhelmed by what Facebook represents and the people behind the TIP project.  Being a small provider among the big players could be somewhat intimidating.  Among the presents were Deutsche Telekom's (Tmobile parent company) CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, SK Telecom (Biggest South Korea Telecom Company) CTO Alex Jinsung Choi and Facebook VP of Infrastructure Jay Parikh.

Some highlights of the summit where the announcement of the Voyager platform, a 1U 100G and DWDM switch with SDN capabilities which purpose is to lower the cost of fiber deployments.

Jay Parikh presenting the Voyager 100G Switch

Another highlight of the summit was the Open Cellular, a project that is currently developing a low cost Software Defined Base Station intended for 4G, LTE, 5G deployments. 

Jay Parikh presenting Open Cellular

Although my main objective for the summit was to learn more about Project Terragraph and millimeter multipoint technologies, not much was discussed about this topic because it is still in "stealth mode" I do was able to snaps some pictures of the Terragraph equipment being tested in the Facebook campus.

TIP Lab @ Facebook

After two days at Facebook Hq I left with much more excitement as I was able to see first hand the stages of development of the projects and what the future holds for worldwide connectivity! 

View of Hacker Way @ Facebook HQ

Google Fiber is stopping, Why it's great news!

Recently the broadband industry and consumers have been shocked by the news that Google Fiber its halting all new deployments of its fiber optic network in the cities that were recently announced as the next fiber hubs: 

Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Jose and Tampa are out of the Google Fiber plans for the moment. 

Some consumers are feeling disappointed as their broadband dreams are vanishing away.  And if you are on the outside of the industry, the recent Google announcement might feel like a stab in the back from the big corp with tons of cash. 

But if you look closely, and have some industry information; these are not bad news at all.  Back in June, Google announced the acquisition of Webpass, an ISP with operations in several markets in the US including San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Chicago among others.  What its special about Webpass is that they are a Wireless ISP that focuses in serving Multi Dwelling Units (MDUS) with high capacity fixed wireless access.  Webpass services both the residential and commercial segments with speeds up to 500 Mbps. 

Since the closing of the Webpass acquisition back in October, the industry has been rumoring that Google was favoring wireless as a access medium over fiber, and it seems that with the Webpass integration, wireless technology knowledge have moved to Google higher levels and the decision was made. 

Google halting all new fiber deployments comes as no surprise to me and its a validation of our business model.   Fiber its expensive and slow to deploy;  Wireless technologies  are maturing at a fast pace and its time has come to shine bright.  Millimeter wave technology (equipment that operates higher than 30 GHz) is posing as a the new contender for fiber-like wireless access and will be able to be deployed faster and less costly that fiber to the home. 

Google is not the only company looking at fixed wireless as an alternate access medium, Facebook is heavily invested in several projects including TIP and Terragraph. Verizon and AT&T both are currently running trials of the technology (Verizon, AT&T) and even Amazon has announced that it too whats a piece of the action. 

Facebook Terragraph access site concept

So to all those crying foul at Google Fiber, I say; wait.  Good news will follow.  Be it from Google Fiber or other alternatives broadband providers that are already deploying ultra fast broadband access using microwave technologies.  Google moving to wireless, brings clout to the WISPs industry, more importantly; investment and faster development of new technologies and products.

Stay Tuned! and GoFaster!