In a shocking move, social media giant Facebook announced it is abandoning its Aquila project that aims to deploy drones to provide internet access across the world through Facebook’s Internet.org initiative.
Flying at 20,000 meters altitude, each of these drones was to cover an area of 150 km in diameter.
In a post published on June 27, Yael Maguire, the project manager at Facebook, justified the abandonment of the project by the need for the company to focus first its attention on the future challenges of the Internet connection, via high-altitude platform stations (HAPS), whether in engineering or regulation. According to the company, this concern seems more important than the material technology like Aquila drones on which several other companies such as SpaceX, OneWeb, SoftBank or Qualcomm are already engaged.
Although it is abandoning the Aquila project, Facebook said that does not mean it is losing his ambition to provide high-speed Internet connectivity to people in remote areas via various devices such as drones. The social network intends to work with companies like Airbus whose research in this area is already advanced.
Facebook plans to acquire equipment directly when the time comes, from the manufacturers thus saving costs on tests, simulations and corrections of manufacturing errors.
This is the second time that Facebook is backing away from its global coverage ambitions in high-speed Internet connectivity.
In June 2015, the US company had abandoned its geostationary satellite network project around the earth to provide Internet in uncovered areas. The idea that was already the subject of a study had discouraged Mark Zuckerberg, the president and CEO, by its cost of realization: 500 million dollars.
