Facebook‘s Munish Sheth, regional head APAC, Facebook Connectivity Solutions, said that the company is working with telecom operators to connect rural communities across India through its Express WiFi program.

In an interview with the Economic Times, Sheth said that the telecom industry is going through a volatile price discovery stage which shows that India wants to get online as long connectivity is available at affordable prices, and this is the space that Facebook will focus on.

Express WiFi is a program, he explained, where Facebook is trying to create a scalable and monetizable model to connect millions of Indians, and the company is in an advanced stage of testing new technologies with multiple partners in India. We are investing in fiber and are partnering telecom operators who can create fiber capacity.

Sheth added, “We are trying to harness the E band and V band to do last mile fiber replacement. We are also incubating other technologies like open compute platform to create open source products and make more R&D efforts that hasten speed to market and also create a better cost for all of us to share.”