Facebook Is Using Up a Whole Satellite to Bring the Internet to Africa

The next chapter in the Facebook-led Internet.org initiative is beaming down internet by satellite to sub-Saharan Africa.

The social media giant said today that it was partnering up with European satellite provider Eutelsat and that both companies will work with Israel-based satellite operator Spacecom to beam down internet connections via Spacecom's to-be launched AMOS-6 satellite. Per Eutelsat's statement, the entire broadband payload would be used to bring internet connections down to users in West, East, and Southern Africa.

While the satellite has yet to be launched, satellite-beamed broadband services will roll out in the middle of 2016.

This is, perhaps, the most definitive step that Facebook's Internet.org initiative has taken toward its ultimate goal of providing internet services to potential users in rural and underserved areas lacking a stable internet infrastructure. The company, like Google, has tinkered with various ways of beaming connections down—they've constructed a stratospheric laser drone to that end, while Google inked a deal to bring free balloon 3G to the entire country of Sri Lanka.

But we all know Facebook and Google don't thrive off philanthropy alone; they thrive off users. And we only have about a year left until, perhaps, African internet users only know their version of the internet through Facebook's lens.

VICE is covering the launch of the Global Goals for sustainable development. In the next fifteen years, the UN wants to achieve three massive tasks: end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and fix climate change. For more information on the Global Goals go to collectively.org.