Recently the news hit that Amazon may be using drones in the future to deliver books and merchandise. Now it appears Facebook may have some drones in their future as well.
According to Tech Crunch, Facebook may be buying Titan Aerospace, a company that makes drones, and it could end up costing Facebook a reported $60 million to purchase it. The goal is to provide internet access to areas that don’t have it, starting in Africa.
As Crunch explains, the drones, which can fly for five years without landing, would act as satellites, and they could provide regional internet for countries that haven’t been able to get net access before. According to this report, the drone can perform the same operations as a satellite, but they are less expensive, and more versatile to use.
It’s easy to take this for granted, but there are five billion people in the world who still aren’t connected to the net, and the drones could potentially be a way of fixing that problem. (Not to mention it would connect more people to Facebook.) If this deal goes forward, 11,000 drones, would be built to potentially achieve this goal, and we’ll see if Zuckerberg and company can pull this off.
