Facebook Shuts Down Its ‘Express WiFi’ Project That Was Conducted In South Africa
Facebook Shuts Down Its ‘Express WiFi’ Project That Was Conducted In South Africa. Facebook has announced that it is shutting down its ‘Express WiFi’ project that sought to bring cheaper internet connection to countries with little to no internet access. “After more than five years in operation, we are planning to wind down our Express Wi-Fi program.” the company said on its website.
Launched in 2016, Express Wi-Fi is a platform developed by Meta Connectivity that has enabled mobile and satellite operators and internet service providers to build, grow and monetise their Wi-Fi businesses in a sustainable and scalable way, while providing their customers with fast, affordable and reliable internet access over Wi-Fi. Together with its partners, they helped expand public Wi-Fi access for people in more than 30 countries via the Express Wi-Fi platform. While it is concluding its work on this program to focus on developing other projects, the company remains committed to working with partners across the telecom ecosystem to deliver better connectivity.
The company also shared that it will be wrapping up its work on the program later this year, it will work closely with Express Wi-Fi partners to help minimise the impact to their businesses and their customer’s connectivity. In South Africa the service was offered in partnership with CellC, a telecommunication company. With Express Wi-Fi, people would access innovative portfolio of monetisation levers via an analytics-driven business operations platform that identifies opportunities and drives marketing promotions.
Meta Platforms, Inc. doing business as Meta and formerly known as Facebook, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company is the parent organisation of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other subsidiaries. Meta is one of the world’s most valuable companies. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Google (Alphabet Inc.), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
