One of Facebook’s biggest breakthroughs in the project has been increasing data capacity of the lasers that will connect the planes with a land-based fiber line that is the link to the Internet. Facebook’s Connectivity Lab has prototyped a full-scale, solar-powered aircraft as well as a lab-tested laser that can deliver data at 10s of GB per second. “That’s ten times faster than any previous system, and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away”, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. Its function is not to drop retail items from the clouds like Amazon’s drones, but to provide Internet access to the hundreds of millions of people who don’t have it in under-served parts of the world.
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Ultimately, the company wants to push “the boundaries of what might be possible, to go into new frontiers for how we connect”. Facebook is now testing these lasers in real-world conditions.
As Facebook works to bring connectivity to the developing world, the social network will hopefully add more users and keep investors happy.
Construction of Facebook’s drone which will provide internet service from the air to remote regions is complete and the craft is ready for tests, says the company.
Parish said Facebook’s plan is to begin testing within a couple of months, most likely somewhere in the United States.
While the speed of transmission is routine for the fibre optics at ground level, the challenge was to achieve that rate through space, said Yael Maguire, Facebook’s engineering director of connectivity at a press briefing.
With a wingspan of 42 m (138 ft) and a carbon fiber frame, Aquila is designed to fly at altitudes between 60,000 and 90,000 ft (18,200 and 27,400 m) for up to 90 days.
The plan calls for using helium balloons to lift each drone into the air, Parikh said.
Facebook first revealed its plan to deliver internet access to remote regions via drone in March a year ago. Only time will tell if this development will be marked as the beginning of the fully connected globe or as the day The Terminator franchise became a documentary series. However, it has received a lot of flak for violating net neutrality in India.
Potential issues for the Aquila could arise from unexpected maintenance requirements or disruption from solar flares, but there should be minimal concern regarding solar power or Internet connectivity, according to Snow.
Zuckerberg said the goal of the program remains giving people a limited number of basic services for health, education and jobs, for example, arguing this is not in conflict with net neutrality principles.
Powered by the sun, it would fly lazy circles more than 11 miles above the Earth, providing broadband-level Internet for people in a 50 mile radius below.
Google, meanwhile, has developed balloons to beam down LTE cellular signals.
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Mr. Parikh said Facebook would even be willing to share information with Google to help both companies’ data-in-the-sky efforts.
