Posting to his official profile over the weekend, Facebook CEO and founder – Mark Zuckerberg – has announced a new initiative that will see the company attempt to build a series of flying drones, for the purpose of delivering the Internet to those who don’t yet have access to it.
The project will arrive as part of the Facebook Connectivity Lab, which is made up of a team of engineering staff that feature “many of the world’s leading experts in aerospace and communications technology,” according to the CEO.
“Today, we’re sharing some details of the work Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’ve made good progress so far. Over the past year, our work in the Philippines and Paraguay alone has doubled the number of people using mobile data with the operators we’ve partnered with, helping 3 million new people access the internet.”
The announcement follows the launch of Internet.org – a collaborative and global partnership dedicated to giving affordable Internet access to everybody. The project, peddled by Facebook, will over the coming years aim to bring Internet connectivity to everyone currently living on Earth.
Right now, the organisation says, about “one third” of Earth’s population has access to the Internet. The other two thirds, don’t. Facebook wants to change that.
And here’s how they plan to do it.
Over the next several years, the company will build a series of autonomous drones that will be set to fly around in the upper atmosphere, (around 20,000m from the Earth’s surface). At this level, the winds are less disruptive and commercial airliners won’t get in the way as they will be flying at a lower level than this.
It’s even above the Earth’s natural weather systems.
The new drones will reportedly be powered by solar energy, as they circle around the Earth’s upper atmosphere beaming the Internet down to all those who require it. I use the word “beaming,” intentionally, as Facebook is attempting to pioneer a new method to deliver the Internet between devices. It’s called “free-space optics” – and basically, it’s the use of lasers.
Everyone loves lasers, right?
In this case, the company hopes one day to be able to use lasers to deliver “really high-capacity data streams” similar to those you would find here on Earth, today, with the access to ‘fibre-optic’ broadband – to everyone. No boundaries, no selected access. Everyone. Connected.
It’s quite literally putting the “Net” in the “Sky.”
As part of the announcement, the CEO also revealed that Facebook had brought in key members of the team from Ascenta, “a small UK-based company whose founders created early versions of Zephyr,” which became the world’s longest flying solar-powered unmanned aircraft.
They, he said, “will join our team working on [the] connectivity aircraft.”
“We’re looking forward to working with our Internet.org partners and operators worldwide to deploy these technologies and deliver on the dream of connecting the world,” Zuck concluded.
It’s an ambitious project, granted. But, if anyone has the global social presence needed to pull something off like this – it has to be Big Blue. You can find out more about the project, today – at internet.org/projects.
You can also read Mark’s full post on the subject, here.
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