The Vido portal quotes Facebook Connectivity Lab as saying that there still are more than 4 billion people in the world, who have no access to the Internet. Lab designers are focusing on providing the Internet to the places, where it is impossible to build an infrastructure to maintain a system like this. Their latest brainchild, Aquila, is a large high-altitude long endurance flying machine with a wing span of a Boeing 737 which, however, weighs less than an electric car. This coal-plastic drone contains a transmitter that can send a signal within a radius of 50 km. It will receive signals with small towers and dish antennas and then send a signal via Wi-Fi or LTE to people down to earth. The device can stay aloft for up to 90 days owing to an effective design and solar batteries. The Aquila will have to fly all day long at the altitude of 27 kilometers to acquire as much solar energy as possible. Connecting Lab plans to create a network in the future, in which drones will be linked by a laser. The team has even increased the data transfer speed to 10 Gbit/s, which is 10 times as high as the commercial standard.
