Five years ago this week… Facebook decided that satellite was a suitable means to deliver internet to a swathe of African nations. The Amos-6 satellite, owned by Israel’s Spacecom, finally had its flight date set for 2016, two years later than planned. Amos-6 was loaded with spot beam technology, ideal for bringing High Throughput Satellite (HTS) beams which re-use spectrum, increasing output almost 100-fold. As for delivering internet, WiFi was out of the question as most phone owners in Africa had feature phones, not WiFi-enabled smartphones, and regardless, the continent did not have enough WiFi access points. To make this work, it looked like Facebook would have to cut deals with MNOs to use the satellites as backhaul for local…