Facebook FB wants to bring the Internet to the whole world – using a giant, solar-powered drone with the wingspan of an airliner. The connections will be fast, with speeds up to tens of thousands of gigabytes per second.
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Mark Zuckerberg congratulates the team after the successful test flight of Aquila.
For 96-mintues last month, the company flew a 140-foot wide unmanned drone over Yuma, Arizona.
As part of its vision to empower the world with internet connectivity, Facebook tested its solar-powered internet drone – Aquila – this week. The drones are created to be deployed as a fleet of autonomous aircraft capable of delivering Internet connectivity to anyone within a 60-mile communication diameter for up to 90 days at a time.
The announcement is noteworthy because Facebook has developed the solar-powered Aquila drone with the objective of reaching Internet access to the hitherto-unconnected remote areas of the world.
Although the platform famously began its life as a social network, it has since evolved into a broader content platform. “Their strategy is to own the Internet”, Akhtar said.
Aquila has been one of the flashier projects out of Facebook’s two-year-old Connectivity Lab. “If their audience isn’t growing, they don’t have a business case”.
About fifteen months ago in March 2015 Facebook announced its massive sized solar powered drone plan at the F8 conference giving the name of the drone as Aquila with the intention of giving internet access to the 4 billion individuals on the planet who have no net access.
Facebook, which has more than 1.6 billion users, has invested billions of dollars in getting more people online, both through an initiative called internet.org – which offers a pared-down version of the internet to poor areas. “That’s 60 percent of the global population”.
More than four billion people still lack access to the Internet, primarily in developing countries, according to the World Economic Forum.
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But that seems to be an obstacle the company has already overcome. “When complete, Aquila will be able to circle a region up to 60 miles in diameter, beaming connectivity down from an altitude of more than 60,000 feet using laser communications and millimeter wave systems”.
