Facebook Delves into uganda’s Mobile Infrastructure as TIP Invests $170m to startups

Facebook announced that it’s going to build a 770-kilometer (500-mile) fiber backhaul network in Uganda, in partnership with India’s Airtel and wholesale provider BCS, carriers that both have networking businesses in the country; and its Telecom Infrastructure Project is leading the charge to invest $170 million into telecoms infrastructure startups, This aims to facilitate connectivity covering more than 3 million people in Uganda and enable future cross-border connectivity to neighboring countries.

We’re excited to work with Airtel and BCS to hopefully bring the people of Uganda better access to the internet. Our work is far from over, and we will continue to look for new ways to collaborate and achieve our mission of connecting the entire world.  Said Facebook

TIP [ telecom infrastructure project ] also announced that it has released $170M investment to startups that are building or working on telecom infrastructure solutions.  This is a great news to the networking startups and telecom startups, having that the past years much developments and funding has gone to the software world.

This initiative in Uganda is a part of our broader strategy to improve connectivity everywhere, including in countries where access the submarine and international capacity has been limited. Based on the learnings and results from our work in Uganda, we will engage with other operators in additional countries to scale this model, with the ultimate goal of helping local operators provide robust network coverage. You can gain more insight of the story here.