Facebook wanted to use tiny drones at the size of a bird to increase the speed of the mobile Internet

For years, Facebook has been looking for ways to improve mobile connectivity and allow more of the population of developed countries to connect to the Internet, seemingly a humanitarian effort, but rather a thinly veiled ploy to bring more of people in its ecosystem of applications. The most visible projects of this effort are Facebook's Internet.org initiative, with its Free Basics and Express Wi-Fi offerings for fast-growing smartphone markets, as well as the abandoned Aquila project, which aimed to drive large solar-powered UAVs that can be projected Internet much like the high-flying Loon helium balloons of Alphabet.

But Facebook was working on another secret method that involved much smaller planes, the size of a bird, that could be used to increase the speed of data transmission on smartphones, according to a report released today. by the newspaper. Internal business. The project, named "Catalina" after an island off the southern coast of California, known to have used a network of racing pigeons, was interrupted about a year ago, confirmed a spokesman for Facebook BI. But its existence illustrates that Facebook was studying connectivity across a variety of lenses.

BI reports that drones would be closer to the size of a sparrow, which would make them almost pocket size. The goal would not be to transmit a functional Internet connection to completely isolated areas, but to increase existing connections at the 2G level to allow smartphone users to stream video and perform other more intensive tasks. data. It is not clear how it would have worked. The report describes drones as designed to carry "high-density SSDs … that could then be used to carry data." They could therefore act as a mesh network between a grounded connection and a user's smartphone. facilitate high bandwidth data transfers.

Whatever it is, it seems that Facebook has moved away from this idea when abandoning the Aquila concept. However, society is not totally out of the game of connectivity. It still has Internet.org, despite the setbacks faced by this organization in India. And when news of Aquila was announced, in June 2018, Facebook said it was still working with Airbus to develop better versions of what are called platform stations at high altitude, or HAPS, which can be integrated to high-speed Internet planes of low Earth orbit. At the time, the company had also announced that it "actively participated in a number of aviation advisory councils and rule-making committees in the United States and in the United States. whole world".