Open-sourcing Magma to extend mobile networks | Hacker News Reader

Open-sourcing Magma to extend mobile networks

code.fb.com

57 pointskaboro10 comments

Facebook internally considers the social network to be their major asset, not their technology. This is very different from other companies, for example Google who build proprietary technology, and generally keeps them that way, but may give away things other than core technology.

Any investment in open technologies or internal (which can be publicly released) technology which make the network effect stronger is considered important.

(I'm an ex-FB engineer and program manager)

Seems to be only the IP side. You have to glue the gateway to yr physical infrastructure yourself.

Looks like more of "MVNO in a box" than an infrastructure software for a company with real network.

Is FB "seeding the field" before going into mobile networks themselves?

I noticed that FB and mobile phone companies offering "free facebook" are all in a borderline antagonistic relationship because messenger kills their revenue, and they want to bill FB an arm and a leg for that.

They may well be planning to sideline physical network owners with that, by propping MVNOs, and forcing physical network operators to turn into plain ISPs.

MVNOs are usually on tight margins, and they usually don't have much bargaining power against their parent network. So it's not unlikely for a network to price in some anti-messenger effects.

And from personal experience, there are hundreds of ways for an operator to screw you over technically without ever breaching a contract. 2 week delays between answering support emails? Standard. 1 month to add an IP to their firewall? It happens. Letting you know 3 days before a certificate expires? Why would they ever let you know before then?

Google Fi seems to be doing OK. I have been wondering why Internet Giant don't innovate in this space for a long time. Majority of the Internet is now Mobile, Google owns the Edge DC for Data Processing. Network for Traffics, it could essentially be the backend of these MVNO and let the parent Network do the Last Mile Work, Telecom Infrastructure, Leasing etc.

As for Apple it could provide Visual Voicemail ( Yes I like that feature ) and other type of Added Value Services. As well we iTunes Credit within Monthly Bill payment.

And yet as far as I can see, most ISP or MNO don't care about your route performance, nor does it care about any Services that improve User Experience. On one hand they don't want to be Dumb Pipe, on the other they are actively acting like one. And not a very good one either.

More news from WMC: https://code.fb.com/connectivity/mobile-world-congress-2019/

Anyone got a link to the repo?

https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma

Thanks Jim!

As they've said in their post, this is really for carriers. On the surface it sounds great. But are there any guarantees that Facebook won't insert code in there eventually to start doing analysis of everyone's internet traffic on those networks? Or giving wholesale surveillance data to the governments in some of these countries?

We've seen that companies like Facebook are like out-of-control drug addicts when it comes to our data, even sucking up data about people's menstrual cycles without their knowledge.

They always wrap this kind of stuff in "changing the world" rubbish language. But we see time and again that behind the shallow marketing, are nefarious motives.

>> But are there any guarantees that Facebook won't insert code

Kinda hard to "insert code" into an open source product without everyone knowing.

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