Facebook has announced they’ve finished building the first out of a series of drones which will act as Internet relays for the most remote areas of the world. Read all about it here!
The newest Facebook drone, which has the same size as a Boeing 737, will operate at 27.000 meters of the ground, and can stay in the air for some 90 days at a time. Facebook claims their newest drones could offer internet at a speed of 10 gigabits per second, and that they might be tested in American soil before the end of the year. These were designed in the UK by Facebook’s own aerospace division, according to Jay Parikh, one of the higher ups of the company when it comes to engineering and infrastructre.
“Our mission is to connect everybody in the world.This is going to be a great opportunity for us to motivate the industry to move faster on this technology”, explained Parikh. He also explained that the team is looking for many other alternatives to these challenge, including satellites, and ground solutions, as their intention is not to build networks and operate them themselves, but to advance these technologies to the point where they become viable for their partners and all operators around the world.
Another Facebook initiative from their project at internet.org is a laser which can shoot data at a speed of tens of gigabytes per second to a point as small as a coin, some 16 kilometers away, which is some 10 times more efficient than the last few achievements with similar technology.
“”Not long ago we started trying out this technology in natural conditions, and by the time we were done, our communication systems via laser could be user to connect our drones to each other and the ground, creating a stratospheric network that could reach even the most remote regions of the planet.”
Despite this, Facebook’s expansion outside of its usual market has made internet providers suspicious, as they claim projects like these are an unfair advantage, but also that the tests done in certain locations would limit the access to certain webs and collected user data without authorization as well.
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