Facebook reveals plans for drone-based, Aquila - Internet in the sky

Facebook ending of July 2015 revealed more details about its plan to find cost-effective ways to provide Internet access to the 10% of the Earth's population that lives far from cell towers or land lines.

The solution: Drones the size of a Boeing 737 — launched by helium balloons.

Powered by the sun, each 1,000 lb. drone would fly lazy circles more than 11 miles above the Earth, providing broadband-level Internet for people in a 50-mile radius below.

The team's dream is "a backbone of the Internet using lasers in the sky," said Yael Maguire, director of Facebook's Connectivity Lab.

The planes, dubbed Aquila, (Latin for "eagle") would be unmanned. Each would spend three months aloft before slowly floating down to earth "like a feather" for refit, said Jay Parikh, vice president of engineering at Facebook.

The effort is part of a project launched a year ago by Facebook's Connectivity Lab to provide Internet access to the 4 billion people around the world who currently lack it.

While many people live in sufficiently connected or urban areas where current methods, such as wires and cellular phones, can provide Internet access, millions of people live where a connection isn't possible.

"Standard telecommunication infrastructure doesn't reach them. If they pulled out a phone, it would have nothing to connect to," said Parikh.

Facebook has set out to find a way to give it to them.

The answer the company's engineers have come up with involves sending planes that can beam down access far above commercial airspace, where there are no commercial flights to run into and no weather to interfere with flight.

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Follow USA TODAY reporter Elizabeth Weise on Twitter: @eweise