Facebook Successfully Tests Laser Internet Drones

rtoz writes: At its F8 conference in San Francisco, Facebook announced the first hardware it plans to use to beam the Internet down to billions of people around the world. Codenamed "Aquila," the solar-powered drone has a wingspan comparable to a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a small car. It will be powered by solar panels on its wings, and it will be able to stay at altitudes of more than 60,000 feet for months at a time. Facebook says it'll begin test flights this summer, with a broader rollout over the next several years. The drones were tested over the UK recently, and everything worked as expected.

Comments

uh huh

[Thud457]

"internet". yeah right. You're not fooling anybody Zuckerberg.

Re:uh huh

[umghhh]

Till we have effective replacement organs growing technology we still could use some replacement organs grown naturally. Besides especially poor people are of interest to security agencies and as state run operations are usually not very efficient one can outsource that spying and localizing to private sector, it is win-win.

too much crap

[eedwardsjr]

So I assume we can expect this airspace to become cluttered like LEO satellite space? The only exception is when these crash, they come down when I high risk of killing people.

Re:too much crap

[rot26]

Oh come on now. It won't be any worse than being struck by a small car at terminal velocity.

Re:too much crap

[ColdWetDog]

African or European?

This says to me....

[Bonzoli]

Please boost my stock, we are out of useful ideas.......

Do you think anyone that needs the internet beamed to them in this crap will be a useful paying customer? The cost of a laden swallow, gripping it by the husk, vs energy costs, repair, maintenance, and insurance will certainly make this in the end, what it appears to be now.

Great alternative to rural areas

[rodrigoandrade]

Mod me down into oblivion if you must, but not everyone lives in Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, or NYC with insanely fast fiber optics.

This is going to be great for people in rural areas, developing countries, and others who otherwise would remain hostages to the poor reliability and high latency of radio and satellite internet.

Re:Great alternative to rural areas

[retroworks]

No, they should mod you up. It is easy to write snarky and cynical comments... they can generate them without having to RTFA. Obviously Facebook makes its money on eyeballs / participants. Why can't this just be a win-win? By expanding access to higher speed internet, Facebook increases its potential market. What's the difference between that and increasing distribution of any product a segment of the marketplace needs?

The USA Highway system was built in part by the distribution needs of corporations. But we are all free to drive our cars and motorcycles on it. Should we not have built the roads because a corporation was going to profit from it? It's called "development".

Re:Great alternative to rural areas

[jaxn]

I catch your drift, but actually fiber to residents in NYC is not easy to come by. The surrounding areas are a different story (Long Island, Westchester, etc).

Verizon left the city for last, in their deal with the State of NY, which allowed tthem to circumvent all local laws/ordinances, for competition and right of way, so they could cheaply, quickly build out their high speed fiber optic network (for FIOS service). When they covered all the areas they wanted, it left little time for NYC, which was likely their intention all along, as it's not like you can just burry more fiber in the city. It requires an immense amount of planning and deals to link up your own city wide network, particularly for residential and business service.

temper your expectations, Uganda.

[nimbius]

to beam the Internet down

*The internet in accordance with local and national regulations pertaining to censorship and surveillance.

to billions of people around the world.

Some restrictions apply, billions of people will be considered based on race, gender, social position and annual income as potential revenue factors when subscribing or continuing to use the product. underfunded schools and desolate post-capitalist urban areas wracked by systemic unemployment and without adequate starbucks will be avoided. Remember: you are the product, the drone is merely another way to deliver that product to consumer affiliate corporations.

Re:temper your expectations, Uganda.

[jaxn]

I envision advertising in browser, kind of like NetZero dialup in the day except this will be achieved through DNS hijacking and http injection. Now they can target their ads to users no matter what they're doing on the web, whether they are paying for ad space on a site or not.

Re:Issue

[drinkypoo]

I feel like an airship would be a lot more effective and safe for this purpose. Why doesn't anyone talk about that? Why always fixed wing drone technology?

Why, indeed?

Troll prevention?

[Pascoea]

"Laser Internet Drones" Am I the only one that read this as a really good way to prevent trolls on Facebook?

Business Model?

[asylumx]

I have not clue how this relates to their business model, but more power to them anyway. I hope society learns a lot from experiments like this -- will its solar panels really supply enough power? At 60k feet they can cover a humungous land area, which potentially means millions of customers. I can't imagine the power consumption of laser communication between this unit and all of the potential customers. Can this really cover an area that big or is it just flying that high to stay out of flight levels of commercial aircraft?

So many questions that this experiment might be able to answer.

Will there be a big warning banner?

[dfn5]

Do not look at Internet with remaining good eye.