this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024

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Japanese telecom NTT, suggests high-altitude solar-powered drones could be 5G base stations in Africa. With coverage of 200 sq km per drone, approx 150,000 of them could blanket the continent with 5G (interestingengineering.com)

submitted 2 years ago by Lugh to c/futurology

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[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Facebook tried something similar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Aquila

[–] CanadaPlus 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Project Loon, too. The idea isn’t new, and I kind of wonder why it’s more viable now.

[–] Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lower solar/battery costs?

[–] CanadaPlus 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I doubt that's the most (financially) expensive component in any of these cases. Making stuff fly is pricey, and maintaining high-bandwidth radio connections can be too.

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