What Will Internet Be Like in 100 Years?

Facebook is planning to provide everyone with internet coverage using renewable energy, for both empowering lives and being eco-friendly at the same time!

The plan is to deploy giant solar powered drones, which will beam the internet to the ground, the areas which are still disconnected from the rest of the world, due to being extremely remote.

recently Facebook completed its test flight. The drone named Aquila was airborne for approximately 2 hours (1 hour 45 mins to be exact) and landed safely, FYI the previous test flight didn't have that lucky ending it crashed :(.


Facebook is hoping to connect the 4 billion people which don't have the luxury of internet using this drone tech due to severe limitation of our present network infrastructure considering the huge investment required to connect this remote parts of the world.

By design, the drone planned to be spending 90 days in flight with a wide coverage of 60-mile radius. Its wingspan is 42 meters, in reference Boeing 737 is less in that context, and weighing  450 kg.

The proposed service level of this drone will be 60,000 feet with a speed of 128 kph, and surprisingly it'll consume power equivalent to 3 hair dryers (yes you heard right 3 hair dryers)!

A single Aquila will not achieve anything so there needs to be a swarm of Aquila which will communicate with each other using lasers. However, that needs a lot of adjustments.

All these seem very promising on paper, however, there are few challenges to be overcome, which is storing enough power during daylight hours so that it can operate 24 hours a day, and especially during long winter nights.

The engineers working on the project also admitted that due to Aquila's size to weight ratio, they are pushing the boundaries of aeronautical engineering, without any realistic precedents till date.

And most potent question is that will this tech be cheaper than the existing technology, which is proven and reliable than any other network infrastructure alternative, only time will tell.

Enjoy the test fight video as provided by Facebook