Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has moved a step closer to launching free internet from the skies. The social network giant announced Thursday the two major milestones in its Connectivity Lab Aircraft and Laser Program.
Facebook’s Jay Parikh said they’ve built the first full-scale version of Aquila, the internet drone, and it’s now ready for flight testing. Mr. Parikh is the Vice President of Facebook’s Global Engineering and Infrastructure.
The engineering group in the United Kingdom has completed the first version of Aquila with wingspan similar to Boeing’s 737, but much lighter. Aquila can stay aloft for up to 90 days according to Mr. Parikh, and beam the connection to the ground from an altitude of around 60,000 to nearly 90,000 feet.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s Engineering team in Woodland Hills, California has achieved a “significant” laser communications upgrade.
Mr. Parikh said the new lab-tested laser communications tech design can beam internet at 10 gigabit per second, and it’s 10 times faster than the “state of the art” technology available in the industry today. This laser internet model can also track a moving receiver the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away.
When finished, Facebook’s drones will use the laser-comm tech, allowing a craft to communicate with other crafts and with ground bases, and continuously beam internet to ground.
But Facebook’s internet drones project still has more work to do. Facebook said it’s open to working with other teams, share what they know, gain some knowledge from other communities, and improve their Internet.org-linked programs.
“Our goal is to accelerate the development,” and quickly advance the state of the technologies involved “to the point that they become viable solutions” for network operators and other partners to deploy — Mr. Parikh said.
Facebook is hoping to reach more than 4 billion people who are not yet online.
But this project is not revenue-related according to the company’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In a February interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Zuckerberg said people connected to the internet “can do some great things,” but the Internet.org project is a nonprofit initiative.
“The first billion people using Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined,” he told the publication. From a business perspective, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Facebook to put the emphasis into “this,” he added.
The social network with billions of users worldwide generates revenue by selling ad spaces. Similar to Google and other profitable internet businesses, Facebook can gain bigger profits by serving more “advertising impressions per day.”
According to estimates (based on the latest quarterly report), Facebook earns $8.3+ per quarter per user in the U.S. or Canada, but only $1.1+ per quarter per one user in Asia-Pacific.
Credit: Featured image courtesy of Facebook
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