Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Wants Drones To Connect the Developing World
judgecorp writes "Facebook is reportedly hoping to buy drone specialist Titan Aerospace in order to provide airborne relays for Internet connectivity in developing countries, as part of its internet.org project. The solar-powered drones are classified as "atmospheric satellites" and can fly for five years. The rumoured project sounds quite similar to Google's Project Loon, which proposes using balloons for the same job." More coverage at SlashCloud, which notes that the purchase is rumored but not yet publicly confirmed.
Is that the stink of desperation that I'm smelling?
Most developing countries have communications monopolies. ie. State Owned. One reason is control, the other reason is profit. In many African countries for example, VSATS have huge tariffs levied to discourage their use by local governments. These initiatives will not see wide use. Can you imagine FB trying to get away with this in Rural India or China? There would be war!
~~~ There is no Wikileaks.
Do you mean blimps or mini blimps not drones?
I have not heard of solar powered drones.
What are they developing, poverty and malaria?
Finally, decent internet in the East Bay!
These would still have to downlink somewhere, probably into the same "state owned" network as everyone else. FB or whomever would, I'm sure, play along with whatever rules, so long as it meant people got airtime and they got money.
The solution is pretty clear: just implement RFC 1149 and RFC 2460 and connectivity will be fine in even remote areas.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Are there enough people in the areas to be served with computers to connect in the first place? Also, since these internet drones would have to fly above storm clouds. I did not see in the article (admittedly scanned it) any mention of wireless protocol. I don't think WiFi would be terribly effective. Unless this is exclusively for business, who is going to pay for the adapters and who is going to support them when the do not install correctly or flake out in some other way. As a last hurdle, would the governments of the emerging countries be willing to let an American company deploy such a thing in the wake of the NSA revelations? I wouldn't.
Overwhelming, I would like to see these drones deployed en mass to the endless under served rural areas of America, and if they are doing WiFi, across the expansive cell phone dead space areas so I can at least have an internet connection on my phone while driving for hours across the half of Kansas that isn't populated and other similar areas. Entertain for a moment that Zuckerburg really does want to do this out of goodness of heart (unlikely, I know). I would much rather see him act out of patriotism and work towards creating a seamless blanket of internet connectivity that covers the absolute entirety of the United States of America that lacks connectivity (which is a lot). This goes for Project Loon too.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
s/developing world/emerging market/ this is no different than a cattle farmer targeting a different breed of heiffer for the opportunity to market, say, wagyu beef. the challenge is what to market to someone who only makes 60 cents a day.
Good people go to bed earlier.
ssia
What does a guy living in squalor need? Oh yeah! Facebook! /sarcasm
There are only *parts* of countries that are not as developed as other parts. Source: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-river-of-myths/
I wonder if this is another Glomar Explorer: a joint CIA (or probably NSA/NRO) spy plane program disguised as a commercial venture. Invite Facebook in (everyone loves FB) and they fly drones over your country and provide some service equivalent to the circuses half of panem et circenses, no cost to the local govt; the five eyes get realtime elint and imagery, but no one needs to know about that.
...they'll be very attractive drones.
Mr Zuckerburg wants to solve the world problem such as famine, drought, poverty, disease, etc by giving them free facebook account. I sense someone is going to win the Nobel peace price.
brought to you by the double edged sword of faceboom^Hk
You think the likely corrupt governments of poor countries will sit idly by and allow a foreign agent to fly drones in their airspace? Particularly if the purported purpose of the drones is to enable seditious speech and organizing?
Ha! Me want facebook. This way I can update my status as I lay dying from dysentery
...all the Internets will be Facebook.
On the bright side, though, I can see battles a-brewing over providing even Facebook "enhanced" Internet to oppressed people from the air. Harder to cut that cable, ya know?
Can Facebook go away already? Head the way of the Walkman... in to history and a humorous glance back at what it was, "Wow, did we really use that? Scary!"
Why? net traffic stays within the aloft net, uplink/downlink can either through the airborne net to a lower tariff location or via satellite (since only data in/out would be out of area traffic). Caching of popular data (youtube, buzzfeed, whatever) could be done at a ground station.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
We are not a century or two behind. You must be American - noone else could possibly even believe that nonsense.
I live in a "third world" country, up in the Andes. We have plenty of internet. Or how do you think our smartphones and computers operate?
Those that don't are so poor that I have no clue who these drones are for. They'd be better off with flooring for their houses, and food. If they are poorer than me, then they don't even have the basics.
Also, I doubt whether my government, or people, will take to having a permenent foreign presence over our skies. Target practice for the airforce?
Hate to break it to you, but while some preconceptions still exist the data shows that South America largely exited the so-called "third world" stage some time ago - there's still problem areas, but for the most part you've pretty much caught up with the developed world by most measures. As a rule you're not yet as rich, but you've managed to harness most of the major benefits of modern technology. Asia and Africa are the remaining problem spots, and much of Asia is currently progressing quite rapidly.
It's important to remember that progress is *extremely* uneven in these places, varying wildly from country to country, and even more wildly between different regions within a country - take China for example: The major cities are among the most technologically advanced in the world, yet much of the population are still basically subsistence farmers without electricity, and who are lucky if their region even gets cell-phone coverage. Most of Africa is in far worse shape. Think of your country 50 years ago, and realize that many places still have a ways to go to catch up to that point.
For a rough estimate of technological penetration, I present this image of the Earth at night. Take a look at your region, and compare it to others. Especially Africa.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/defa...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
According to this article, the coverage for these will be an 18-mile radius.
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
While an air-to-air component could extend that with multiple drones, the whole system is still likely to link to a ground station within a small geographical area. That's why I don't think you'd get out of the "state owned" area, if these were ever employed in such a place.
A major point of these would be to eliminate the satellite link, so a further uplink to a satellite just seems ridiculous.
drones for facebook? I trust them less than I trust most governments.
U2 guitarist David Evans, better known as "The Edge" and known for his "drone" guitar playing style stated today through a press release issued by his publicist that he is happy with the idea that drones could be used to connect the developing world and is willing to play his guitar as much as is needed.
When contacted, the spokesman for the local Bagpipe group appeared happy with the idea but because of his thick accent we weren't really sure what he was saying.