Expanding its reach to remote areas of the world, Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) has unleashed its drone equipped with connectivity technologies to enhance the education and growth of people living on such grounds. These drones will fly at a height of 60,000 ft and will provide the Internet connectivity to a particular area on the Earth’s surface.
Jay Parikh, vice president of Engineering, said that the Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone in the world and hence we have been launching such drones to provide connectivity to those who have been left out.
The drones will be tested out during this fall in the US and then will be shot in some remote locations. Drones have a wing span of 46 yards and weigh just under 900 pounds. Apart from that, they will be hovering above the surface for nearly 90 days. Primarily, these drones will have a coverage circle of 2 miles – Just enough for a village, but not for a town or city.
Facebook CEO mentioned the excitement he has for the first full-scale drone that company built. Drones will be laser equipped for them to communicate with other drones in the area, and since they are flying at 60,000 feet, there isn’t going to be any trouble of commercial airlines.
Facebook said that drones will provide a bandwidth of 10Gbps, which is good and will be able to satisfy the people it is going to serve. However, websites with massive data consumption have been put on a exclude list for the Internet through these drones.
All these efforts are for those 10 percent people in this world who are living without any internet connectivity, or maybe don’t know what an Internet connection is. Certainly, access to the websites, such as WikiPedia and Google, will help people gain more information, live a better life and have better opportunities for the future.
Who knows, we might see a great scientist, or a doctor or an engineer due to this noble initiative. Everybody is trying to have a rise in share values and make their investors happy – least they care about the fellow human beings living in the darkness, without any information or knowledge in this highly connected world.
Apart from this, Google also has this Project Loon to provide the Internet connectivity with balloons. The Internet giant has already received permissions from the Sri Lankan government, and it’s expanding its reach even further. While some say, Facebook and Google are competing against each other, less they know that this is something for improving the lives of those who have been left out. They aren’t looking for monetary profit, but a profit that makes this world a better place to live.
