Via USA Today:
Facebook on Thursday 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 is a thousand-pound drone the size of a Boeing 737 that will be launched by helium balloons.
Powered by the sun, it 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.