Facebook's plan to deliver internet everywhere involves drones, lasers, and satellites

Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Facebook's plan to deliver internet everywhere involves drones, lasers, and satellites
(Image credit: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious plan to make the internet inescapable involves drones, infrared lasers, and tons of satellites. The company is working with scientists and aerospace engineers to create a lab that will develop ways to make the internet available to remote and underserved populations.

The "Facebook Connectivity Lab" will bring together NASA employees, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and engineers from the British firm Ascenta, which builds solar-powered drones, to figure out ways to bring the internet to "every person in the world." The plan is to test drones over suburban areas, shoot up satellites over more rural locations, and use the laser beams to make long distance connections even faster, writes CNN.

If this plan sounds similar to Zuckerberg's previously announced Internet.org coalition, that's because it sort of is. But that project was meant to bring together more "traditional" firms, like Samsung and Nokia, to help deliver the 'net to far flung spots. So far, more than three million people in Paraguay and the Philippines have access to it.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us

Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.