[Corrected 4/14/14, 6:13 pm. See below.] Facebook is aiming to become a telco. Drones are the towers. Oculus are the phones. WhatsApp is the service.

Twenty-one billion dollars is cheap for a next-generation telco. There is more behind the WhatsApp and Oculus deals than the apparent need to bring teens and gamers under Facebook’s fold. Facebook and Google are in a heated race to become international telcos. Consider the value of a service with the potential to disrupt an aging international telecommunications industry worth well over a trillion dollars. Imagine the subscriber base of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and NTT DoCoMo combined. Under that lens, WhatsApp was a steal. So, how does one become a telco?

Infrastructure

First you start with infrastructure: drones, fiber, and airships. Investment in infrastructure in one market can lead to an advantageous beachhead when entering larger related markets. Think, for example, about the humble origins of the telco MCI, which provided coast-to-coast relay stations for truckers using CB radios in the 1960s. Today MCI is part of Verizon, the largest mobile carrier in the U.S.

With Google’s balloon-based Project Loon and drone-based Titan Aerospace and Facebook’s acquisition of Ascenta, these Internet companies are targeting regions with the least competition—those without towers or with limited connectivity, such as developing nations and medium-sized cities—as test-beds for next generation technology. [The previous sentence had stated that Facebook acquired Titan.] What happens once these new technologies are perfected and become faster and cheaper than maintaining cable? Similar to Moore’s Law and silicon, we are witness to an exponential performance curve in wireless. Look at the relative speed in which Wi-Fi has progressed in the 2000s. Now imagine a mobile fleet of drones that could be retrofitted or replaced at the speed of a Formula 1 pit stop.

Think of that time when you walked behind a building or drove past part of a highway where the signal goes dead, or you are in the crowd at SXSW and there is just too much traffic for the telcos to handle. Usually, AT&T would drive in extra trucks with cellular towers on top in order to add a few more bars back to your phone’s signal, but that takes months of planning. Imagine a system of drones that could swarm over cities like vultures, reacting in real time and seeking out locations where phones are reporting low signals before customers even notice.

Hardware

So where does Oculus VR fit in? Oculus Rift is the phone. Client hardware such as the Rift, Google Glass, and the Moto 360 is required to run a service. One utility for the Rift is for tele-presence, getting experts in areas where they can’t be at an instant. However, the acquisition of Oculus means more than people in masks … Next Page »

Michael Agustin co-founded Weaver, a next-generation messaging app that gives conversations visual context. Follow @michaelagustin

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