Will Facebook's OpenCellular Crush BRCK?

Published: July 11, 2016, 6:55 a.m.

Last week, the global digital behemoth that is Facebook announced that they\u2019ll be rolling out the OpenCellular system worldwide. OpenCellular is said to be an inexpensive, weather-resistant and fully customisable platform that will be able to serve as a wireless access point for connecting devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi.\n\nWhile this move by Facebook is no doubt just a footnote in the company\u2019s playbook for achieving complete digital dominance, one wonders if this could signal the beginning of the end for the likes of Kenya\u2019s BRCK\u2014 a home-grown system designed to do exactly what OpenCellular promises to do, perhaps less reliably.\n\nOne wonders if there is any chance that a minnow like BRCK can stand up to the fire and might of a beast like Facebook? It seems unlikely that BRCK has captured enough of the affordable WiFi deployment market to develop a legitimate first-mover advantage, and it\u2019s equally unlikely that anyone over at Facebook is losing any sleep worrying about their plans being disrupted by smaller players.\n\nAlso in this week\u2019s show, we share a snippet from a conversation Andile Masuku had with Gareth Cliff\u2014 the controversial South African Radio DJ, Idols South Africa judge, and Co-founder & President of Africa\u2019s largest podcast producer, CliffCentral.com. Listen in to hear Gareth\u2019s candid take on why he quit one of South Africa\u2019s most lucrative radio gigs to found a platform that now boasts over 40 podcast titles and garners over 140,000 downloads per week.\n\nMusic Credits:\nMusic by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)\nMusic licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0