Mark
Zuckerberg has plans to expand broadband coverage using unmanned high-altitude
aircraft, satellites and lasers
The Guardian, Juliette Garside, Friday 28 March 2014
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| Just 16% of Africa’s population used the internet last year, compared with 75% in Europe. Photograph: Yannick Tylle/Corbis |
Facebook
has bought a Somerset-based designer of solar-powered drones for $20m (£12m) as
it goes head-to-head with Google in a high-altitude race to connect the world's
most remote locations to the internet.
Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has unveiled plans to beam broadband
connections from the skies, using satellites, lasers and unmanned high-altitude
aircraft designed by the 51-year old British engineer Andrew Cox.
His Ascenta
consultancy will become part of Facebook's Internet.org not-for-profit venture,
joining a team of scientists and engineers who formerly worked at Nasa and the
US National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
Facebook is
building its Connectivity Lab as a direct challenge to Google's Project Loon,
which is launching high-altitude balloons over New Zealand and hopes to
establish an uninterrupted internet signal around the 40th parallel of the
Earth's southern hemisphere.
The race to
put the first man on the Moon was led by the US and Russian governments, but
today it is private companies – the cash-rich digital corporations of Silicon
Valley – that are driving the sub-space race. The ambition is to connect the
billions of people who currently have no access to the world wide web.
"In
our effort to connect the whole world with Internet.org, we've been working on
ways to beam internet to people from the sky," Zuckerberg wrote on his
blog. "Today, we're sharing some details of the work Facebook's
Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites … and lasers to deliver
the internet to everyone."
With 1.3
billion users, Facebook has already reached a large number of the estimated 3
billion people who use the internet. Connecting the other 4 billion will hugely
expand its potential user base.
In what the
Internet.org website describes as "one of the greatest challenges of our
generation", engineers are trying to solve the problem of beaming fast,
responsive internet signals to and from the Earth's surface from heights of
20,000 metres.
Facebook is
exploring the potential of two types of craft – satellites, which could be used
in remote rural locations from the Highlands of Scotland to the Amazon basin,
and drones, which would fly over suburban areas.
Yael
Maguire, an Internet.org engineer, explained: "In suburban environments we
are looking at a new type of plane architecture that flies at 20,000 metres, at
the point where the winds are the lowest. It's above commercial airlines, it's
even above the weather. They circle around and broadcast internet down but
significantly closer than a satellite."
Invisible
infrared laser beams, which can carry large amounts of information at high
speeds across space using free-space optical communication technology (FSO),
will connect the satellites to each other and to receivers on the surface of
the Earth.
The plans
may sound like science fiction, but Jon Excell, the editor of The Engineer,
said the use of sub-space drones as an alternative to satellites was already a
credible technology.
"A lot
of people have looked at this area," he said. "Satellite launches are
just phenomenally expensive. Solar-powered craft are a lot cheaper because you
don't have to launch them into space. They are also much easier to maintain.
Satellites stay in orbit until they stop working, but these craft can be
brought back down and repaired if anything goes wrong."
Just 16% of
Africa's population used the internet last year, compared with 75% in Europe,
but the drones and balloons being sent into space could soon bring it to areas
where individuals do not yet have electricity or computers. Even in areas where
there are no masts, however, the mobile phone is nearly ubiquitous. One in five
people already own a smartphone.
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