Facebook's first hardware. The Aquila Drone.

Facebook to provide high speed internet to thousands of people by beaming internet access down from the sky.

This week ( 27/03/2015) we had Facebook's"F8 Keynote" take place in San Francisco,
and it came with a number of exciting announcements including the news that a company Facebook purchased in 2008 called "Parse" will be providing open source "Internet of Things" applications on the Facebook platform for users to interact with many of their devices from one place.

But even more exciting and interesting was the announcement that Facebook are developing a drone which will fly over areas with no internet access and beam down lasers covering the targeted region and provide it with a high speed internet connection.
From the beginning it has always always been Mark Zuckerbergs mission to connect everyone from all corners of the contributing highly to the internet.org organization. The development of the "Aquila Drone" may be the huge game changer for billions of people across the world. (It is estimated over 2.8 Billion people still have no access to an internet connection)

Usually the only talk of drones we hear is how much people and buildings they are destroying as a result of armies using them to wipe out specific targets from miles high up in the sky.

The Aquila drone will have a wingspan nearing that of a Boeing 747. Built from extremely light weight materials like carbon fibre it will weigh less than a car, this is necessary as the Aquila's engineers predict it will need to stay airborne for over 3 months to provide consistent access.
It will be powered through the solar panels placed on its wings and fuselage.

With its power coming mainly from a source of Sunlight it raises the question as how it will operate in regions where light and clear skies is a rare occurrence .

The idea of floating a connection over a region isn't new as Google are also planning to fly huge balloons over similar disconnected areas. The Idea of a balloon does seem simpler in the grand scheme of things but a trade off if this simplicity is that it can be easily forced out of where its supposed to be with aggressive wind-currents.

I really like hearing about these kinds of projects and large companies in general making it there business in general to help less developed parts of the world . Even though I'm not so sure they would be happening if there wasn't a substantial monetary return for the organizations.