Facebook showed off plans to bring the Internet to billions of people around the world by way of a solar-powered laser drone this week. The drone, codenamed Aquila, the V-shaped unmanned vehicle has the wingspan of a Boeing 767, but is surprisingly light, weighing less than a small car.
During a developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook showed off the new craft's latest design. This new craft has the ability to stay in the air for up to three months at a time.
According to Facebook, the social media giant hopes to bring the Internet to about five billion people that it has yet to reach by launching over 1,000 of these drones that are capable of beaming high speed data with lasers from 60,000 to 90,000 feet into some of the world's most remote regions.
"We want to serve every person in the world," head of Facebook's Connectivity Lab, Yael Maguire says. "Can we reach a point where everyone on the planet gets the same message at once? I'm looking forward to that day."
Facebook is expected to begin testing these new drones sometime this summer.
Facebook isn't the only company getting into the drone game. Earlier this month, Google announced its drone company, Titan, plans a test voyage this year that could also bring Internet to people on the ground.
Titan's drone, which has been described as an "atmospheric satellite," can maintain high altitudes for a prolonged period of time. The team at Titan is currently working on a new ultra-light drone that would be able to simply hover in the stratosphere for long periods of time to beam Internet signals to targeted areas on the ground.
But in the high stakes competition for total domination of the Internet, Google already has a leg up with high speed fiber networks and Amazon is already experiementing with delivery drones, Facebook is under pressure to show that it, too, can pursue projects that are more speculative than product.
"The Amazons, Googles and Facebooks are exploring completely new things that will change the way we live," said Ed Lazowska, who holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. "There are other companies out there like Hewlett-Packard and IBM, but they aren't doing the really huge things anymore."
