Facebook Built an Actual Plane to Bring the World Internet Access

Facebook has built an actual plane -- a 140-foot, solar-powered, unmanned Aquila -- to serve as a flying Internet hub that will provide Wi-Fi access to parts of the world where connectivity is lacking. The plane isn’t just an idea or a mockup. An actual version of the plane was built in the United Kingdom and Facebook plans to test it, probably somewhere in the United States, later in 2015, according to Facebook’s VP of Engineering Jay Parikh. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always preached that his goal with the social network is connecting everyone in the world, and part of that challenge is connecting everyone to the Internet.

Facebook launched Internet.org a few years back to do just that, and has been trying to provide some emerging markets with free Internet services in hopes of getting them online (and on Facebook). Facebook wants to use a system of lasers to beam data from the ground, to a network of planes in the sky, and back down to people on the ground. The planes, which will fly well above commercial airspace at somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, will be able to provide wireless access to an area with a radius as large as 50 miles, Parikh said. The operation is still far from complete. Facebook has built just one plane, but hopes to build an entire fleet. That fleet of planes will connect with one another to form a kind of web of connectivity high in the sky. Facebook hasn’t located a specific test location within the US, but Yael Maguire, the engineering director in charge of Facebook’s connectivity efforts, says there are no federal regulations that will prohibit the company from flying the Aquila at the proposed altitude. “Right now, it is really new territory,” he said.