Facebook wants to circle Africa with an undersea data cable

Wall Street Journal sources maintain that Facebook is in talks to run an undersea data cable that would run around much of Africa.

Details are few and far between, but it might link to existing beach access points in countries along the eastern, northern and western coastlines with the help of telecoms like MTN Group and Vodafone.This would help improve access to Facebook for more of the continent and might just lower the social network's data costs by cutting out in-between companies.

This would focus on improving access within a single continent, and might be vital if Facebook wants to continue adding users now that over 2.3 billion people are already signed up. Internet service as a whole can be unreliable in Africa due to a developing infrastructure that doesn't always offer fast, consistent links to the rest of the world.

This would ensure that all of Facebook's services are within reach and perform as well as you'd expect.

Original article
Author: Engadget

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