Social media giant Facebook is posing challenges to leaders in the $500 billion telecom equipment market with the project called Voyager.
Earlier, Facebook made foray into data center related equipment to cut IT equipment costs to run its business.
With the launch of Voyager, an initiative by Facebook, the social media network will force top telecom equipment maker such as ZTE, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, NEC, Fujitsu, IBM, HPE, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Brocade, etc.
Telecom network and software vendors are already facing pressure due to slow growth rate in Capex (capital expenditure) by top telecom operators. It is expected telecom vendors need to wait till 2020 when 5G will be officially launched to see the spike in the growth rate of mobile equipments.
Facebook has made a recent addition to its Telecom Infra Project (TIP) with an open-source transponder named Voyager and other designs.
The US technology company, which announced the TIP Project in February, is adding to its Open Compute Project initiative with this launch.
The Open Compute Project focuses on offering larger data center ecosystem with open design specifications for hardware.
Facebook has revealed designs for its Voyager transponder and router as contributions to the same.
TIP currently boasts of over 300 members with Bell Canada, du (EITC), NBN, Telia, Telstra etc.
Facebook also revealed plans related to the Open Optical Packet Transport project, which will be tested along with partners.
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Disaggregated hardware and software optical networking platforms via a platform created by Facebook, Acacia Communications, Broadcom, Celestica, Lumentum and Snaproute, was also announced.
Finally, OpenCellular, a wireless architecture containing schematics, layout, design files, specs and protocols was also announced.
OpenCellular claims to enhance connectivity in remote areas with tests on the same for 2G units by operators underway.
Facebook also launched a telecom accelerator in Seoul in collaboration with SK Telecom.
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Facebook also unveiled an OpenCellular platform offering wireless access designed for 2G, 3G and LTE networks to provide economic voice and data connectivity to rural population.
Facebook will spend an estimated $4.5 billion on capital expenditures (Capex) in 2016.
Capex was $3.2 billion during 3Q16, going up 76 percent owing to investments in data centers, servers, office buildings and network infrastructure.
Facebook is also working in collaboration with 30 partners including Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Nokia and SK Telecom for its Telecom Infra Project with Intel and Nokia contributing in an initial suite of reference designs, and Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom aiding the deployment of the technology.
It was reported earlier in the year that Google, Facebook , Microsoft Corp., Alibaba Group and Amazon.com will spend $26.8 billion on network equipment hardware, software and services in 2016.
Vina Krishnan
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