When I tell people that we are in the information age!, am not bluffing.
Connectivity, to the internet will itself provide avenues for global exponential growth especially in commerce with a ripple effect on economy, livelihood and lifestyle. This article am about to write, will show you how this global connectivity will suffice.
Last August, Facebook partnered with leading technology companies to launch Internet.org — a global effort to make affordable basic internet services available to everyone in the world.
[su_dropcap style=”flat”]C[/su_dropcap]onnecting the world is one of the fundamental challenges of our time. When people have access to the internet, they can not only connect with their friends, family and communities, but they can also gain access to the tools and information to help find jobs, start businesses, access healthcare, education and financial services, and have a greater say in their societies.They get to participate in the knowledge economy.
Building the knowledge economy is the key to solving many of our big social and economic challenges, and creates new growth and opportunities for people in every country. A recent study by Deloitte found that the internet is already an important driver of economic growth in many developing countries. Expanding internet access could create another 140 million new jobs, lift 160 million people out of poverty, and reduce child mortality by hundreds of thousands of lives. Connectivity isn’t an end in itself, but it’s a powerful tool for change.
with the diversity of technological needs for connectivity across different geographic location, there is really a lot [su_tooltip style=”green” position=”north” size=”1″ title=”Connecting from the sky” content=”Learn more about this” close=”yes”]HERE[/su_tooltip] for you to read, but in this article i will just go straight to how Facebook connectivity labs aims to achieve its internet connectivity concept.
Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is building a team to develop these technologies, including areas such as drones, satellites, mesh networks, radios and free space optics, as well as other promising areas of research. We’ve hired some of the leading experts in these fields from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Ames Research Center and other centers of aerospace research.
Drones and High Altitude Long Endurance systems
High altitude drones are one major area facebook + partners is focused on developing. To understand the reasons for this, it is helpful to consider some of our technical constraints.
facebook with internet.org want to:
- Fly as close to the ground as possible in order to maximize signal strength.
- Fly at a high enough altitude where the wind is not very strong in order to maximize
endurance. - Fly outside of regulated airspace for safety and quick deployment.
- Be able to precisely control the location of these aircraft, unlike balloons.
- Build the smallest structure possible so it requires minimal energy to stay aloft.
- Build a large enough structure that can effectively harvest all the energy it needs
from the sun. - Build the cheapest structure so we can cost effectively produce enough to span many
areas. - Build a re-usable structure to make it more cost effective as well.
well this is just I must say there is more good news coming in regard to connectivity.
Facebook’s ambitious plan to bring internet to the entire world with a fleet of broadband-beaming unmanned aerial vehicles has taken a step closer to fruition. The company’s vice president of engineering, Jay Parikh, told The Wall Street Journal that Facebook is planning “a real test flight” of its solar-powered internet drone this summer. A smaller version of the drone, one tenth the size of the planned product, was tested earlier this month.
The scheduled test flight would be the first time the full-sized internet drone — called Aquila — will take to the skies. Facebook says the vehicle will have the wingspan of a commercial passenger jet and the length of “six or seven [Toyota] Priuses,” but will only weigh as much as four car tires. The lightweight build should help the craft stay flying for weeks, months, or years at a time, using solar energy to keep itself aloft. Google, also in the process of developing its own internet-proliferation project, is using a different approach. The company’s Project Loon uses a swarm of balloons to disseminate broadband to unconnected portions of the world.
This idea is so revolutionary and i am sure some of you may have comments and we would really love your contribution. For this project to fly, everyone needs to understand the implication of connectivity to development.
