Here’s wild idea – what if you built a solar powered drone that could fly around the sky providing internet access to cities or towns below? This is exactly what Facebook is planning to do and check out the videos below for some more details on this new and very cool idea.
There’s no doubt Facebook has wanted and continues to want to provide internet access to the entire planet. The idea of building a solar drone that can fly around different areas of the Earth to do this doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Infrastructure on the ground can get pretty expensive to build and takes more time, but if you can send a drone out and beam down a signal – why not.
Here’s link to the full story on Fortune from earlier this year.
Facebook Blog Post With More Details on Building Communications in the Stratosphere
Facebook blogged about this in greater detail as well and has some cool images to share as well. Check out their post with some more details. I guess this is what happens when a bunch of super smart engineers get together with some serious R & D money to burn
Not to Be Left Out, Google is Joining this Drone Internet Party too
Naturally, anything Facebook might think about doing Google will make a play to try and do it better – including beaming internet signals down to earth from drones in the sky. Vice Magazine (awesome source of news BTW) details the Google internet drone plans here
Solar Powered Drones Have Arrived
As detailed in this video below by Titan Aerospace (recently acquired by Google), making this whole internet from the sky thing possible requires that there be commercially available drones on the market. Looks like these guys have got that covered and while I doubt they will be in any drone retail stores any time soon, they only stand to grow in demand.