Mark Zuckerberg has made it no secret that he wants to rest of the world to get online and he again made that point at a conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. According to New York Times on March 26, Facebook intends to make global internet a reality through the use of high-flying planes, with a project code-named Aquila. The unmanned aircraft weigh about the same as a small car but are v-shaped and have the wingspan of a boeing 767 (156 feet). The planes will run on solar power to provide internet to the five billion people who don’t have it yet.
For background: Last year, Facebook started up their very own drone team with the acquisition of drone-makers at Ascenta. Now that team believes their solar-powered planes can help alleviate the internet problem in a real way. Right now, they believe their crafts can stay in the air, flying higher than commercial planes, for three months at time. They’ll be able to provide high-speed data from 60,000 to 90,000 feet away. For especially remote areas, Facebook proposes using satellites that provide network access.
The big picture: Everyone in the world receiving the same message at the same time. Assuming regulators will buy into the idea, Facebook thinks its possible with a fleet of 1,000 planes above the Earth. However, that future might be pretty far off. Though they’ve said test-flights will take place this summer, releasing the actual product could take years. And even if the product is possible, Facebook will then have to assess the cost vs. profit at that time. As noted by The New York Times, right now it appears they are comfortable spending billions on the research, but who knows how they’ll feel 10 years from now.
Facebook isn’t the first company to try such a thing; Google is also trying to bring the rest of the world and its money to the internet with it’s Project Loon , which uses untethered balloons to broadcast internet connections.
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