Facebook is launching an open-source wireless box that will connect people in areas that don’t have Wi-Fi to the Internet. The platform is called OpenCellular and it has the capacity to connect up to 1,500 people with a modem the size of a shoe box. The device has impressive range, reaching people up to 10 km away.

OpenCellular was designed by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook to help connect the 4 billion people who don’t have access to wireless connectivity. Despite the widespread global adoption of mobile phones over the last 20 years, the cellular infrastructure required to support basic connectivity and more advanced capabilities like broadband is still unavailable or unaffordable in many parts of the world. Tje folks at Facebook want to help solve this problem.

The company decided to make the device open source in order to ensure it improves over time. OpenCellular can offer everything from 2G to LTE. Being open source, anyone or any company can legally copy the design and add it to its own products.

You can read more on Facebook at https://goo.gl/AGlVq6.