Tech companies are working to make sure that people have internet as soon as possible, as a variety of organizations and companies are working to expand electricity to hundreds of millions of people who don't have it. Ten million people in places like Africa and North and Central America will have internet access thanks to a partnership between Microsoft and Viasat. This will be the first time that a satellite internet company is getting involved in a project that uses old TV spectrum and other technology to connect millions of people.
According to a Wednesday press release from Microsoft, the Viasat partnership will cover 5 million people in Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other countries. According to Teresa Hutson, VP of technology and corporate responsibility at the company, the satellite and fixed wireless tech will be used to reach remote areas that previously have had few, if any, options for conventional internet access.
Satellite internet has its own challenges and can be unreliable. It's the same for both fixed and mobile. Having access to the internet at all will be a big upgrade for many places that Microsoft and Viasat plan to roll out in the next few years.
Microsoft has a lot of goals for its Airband project. According to the post, the company wants to provide internet access to 250 million people by the end of the century. 100 million of those people will live in Africa, that's what it says. The company said it was trying to connect 40 million people by the summer of 2022. In its Wednesday post, Airband claimed that it had delivered internet access to over 50 million people.
Some of the attempts to expand internet access have been unsuccessful. In the past two years, both Google and Meta have stopped their projects that were supposed to use aircraft to beam internet to areas that weren't connected. In the US, Starlink satellite internet has improved internet access, but it hasn't helped people who can't afford service.
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