14 DAY TRIAL // If you thought drones were a privilege available only for institutions such as the FBI or NASA, then you might be surprised to find out that Facebook is no stranger to them either.
Last year, Facebook disclosed the fact that they were working on building drones, satellites and lasers in their Connectivity Lab, hoping that this would help them deliver Internet services to every person across the Globe.
Through the Internet.org campaign, which is actually a partnership between Facebook and seven mobile phone companies, they aim to bring Internet access in remote places in order to accomplish their plan of connecting the world.
The campaign has been quite a success so far, given that Facebook has managed to bring Internet to less developed countries such as The Philippines, Zambia or India.
Facebook is not the only one to make use of drones
Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had previously communicated their intention to build drones in a Facebook post, but no significant updates have been released and people are wondering if any progress has been made since that first announcement.
The matter was briefly discussed during the Mobile World Congress, when Zuckerberg was rather scarce on the details and only revealed that they are still working on it.
Mashable reported that during the same interview, Zuckerberg declared that they would even be willing to work with is main competitor, Google, which also announced that they would be releasing solar-powered drones this year.
On top of that, Google also has its atmospheric balloons project to worry about, which were built to act as satellites and provide Internet access in a certain area.
So far, there has been no news of a collaboration between the two, but at this rate, Google is very likely to beat Facebook and release the drones sooner.
Irrespective of who does the first move, people are currently waiting to see how the drones will improve the speed of the Internet and if they manage to provide affordable services to the currently four billion people who do not have Internet access.
But it would seem that Facebook and Google are not the only tech companies wanting to offer Internet to the world, as Elon Musk, the co-founder of Space X, also made an announcement on Twitter saying that they are planning on sending tiny satellites to increase Internet access.
SpaceX is still in the early stages of developing advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations. Announcement in 2 to 3 months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2014