Last year, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook surprised many when it revealed that it joined forces with other major tech companies to bring internet access to the two-thirds of the world that's offline. But what's really surprising is how they plan to do it. Today, Facebook confirmed rumors
that engineers are working on developing a fleet of solar-powered
drones that can beam internet access down to people in remote regions of
the world.
According to today's
announcement from Internet.org — the organization that
Facebook, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and others joined last
year to help spread internet access — the drones would fly autonomously
for months at a time at an altitude of 20,000 meters (roughly 65,000
feet). That's well above commercial airspace, and it's a good spot for
the drones because it reduces risks that winds and weather will
interfere with flight.
It may sound crazy, but scientists have already made similar solar-powered planes. One, called Solar Impulse, flew nearly 1,000 miles on a single trip,
and it's capable of infinite gas mileage. It uses solar panels to
charge up during the day, and battery keep it flying at night.
To solve the challenges that
face the project, Facebook has hired aerospace experts from Ascenta, a
company that's built solar-powered drones, as well as others from NASA.
It was previously rumored that Facebook acquired another drone company, called Titan Aerospace, but it seems that the talent attached to this project comes from elsewhere.
Team hopes to use lasers for high-speed communications between the drones
The team is working on coming
up with a way to improve data communications through the air. They're
developing what's known as free-space optical communication (FSO), and
hope to use lasers to send messages between the drones and the ground.
If they pull it off, the tech could offer speeds comparable to fiber
optic cables. It's not all about drones though. The organization says
that in very low density areas, it's working to introduce
satellite-based internet that uses the same FSO technology for
communication.
Brining internet connectivity
to remote regions has long been difficult. The major issue is cost
effectiveness: it usually takes land rights and construction to connect
an area, and many spots don't have enough users to justify the cost.
That's one of the issues that Internet.org and others, like Google through its balloon-based Loon program, are trying to solve. If they can pull it off, the two-thirds of the world without the internet might finally come online.
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