Embattled Facebook still wants to connect the next billion people

The Bombyx fibre cable installing robot in action. (Image: Supplied)

Thu, 14 Oct 2021

Setting out last week to explain its plans to extend internet connectivity to a billion more people worldwide, Facebook’s timing couldn’t have been worse.Its virtual briefing for Asia Pacific region journalists came hard on the heels of a major outage on the global backbone that connects its data centres. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all unusable for hours, affecting literally billions of users.To make matters worse, former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen had just appeared on 60 Minutes, explaining h...

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