Mark Zuckerberg’s most famous for Facebook, but his work on internet.org could be even more important. A Connectivity Lab is working on new technology to connect the next billion people. The laser communication system would beam data from the sky into communities, dramatically increasing the speed of sending data over long distances, compared to current techniques.
The end result of the project will certainly involve satellites, but may involve a network of drones, I’m guessing solar powered drones.
Normally you wouldn’t be able to see the actual beams, but for this demonstration, they were made visible. This is just one connectivity project being worked on, and an excited Zuck shared photos through his Facebook page.
There’s really no information at this stage about how fast the data transmission would be and why there’s two different lasers when the final result would almost certainly be a single beam. Not being in the visible spectrum means humans and animals won’t know exactly where the transmission is occurring, much like that of a microwave link. Obviously with any new technology it needs to be safe, especially for things passing between the source and destination.
Certainly one to watch.
More information at Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
