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| An illustration picture shows the log-on screen for the Website Facebook on an Ipad, in Bordeaux, Southwestern France, January 30, 2013. |
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc is in talks to buy drone maker Titan Aerospace for $60 million, according to media reports.
The high-flying drones would give Facebook, the
world's No.1 Internet social network, the ability to beam wireless
Internet access to consumers in undeveloped parts of the world,
according to the technology blog TechCrunch. TechCrunch first reported
the deal late on Monday, citing an anonymous source.
The effort would help advance Facebook's
Internet.org effort, aimed at connecting billions of people who do not
currently have Internet access in places such as Africa and Asia.
Facebook declined to comment.
Titan Chief Executive Vern Raburn declined to comment on whether Facebook was buying the company or a large order of its planes.
"I can't comment one way or the other," Raburn said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
Titan is developing a variety of solar-powered
"atmospheric satellites," according to the company's website, with
initial commercial operations slated for 2015. The drones, which fly at
an altitude of 65,000 feet and can remain aloft for up to five years and
have a 165-foot (50-metre) wingspan, slightly shorter than that of a
Boeing 777.
"What we have is an airplane that's
solar-powered, so it doesn't have any fuel and it can climb up to a very
high altitude and just stay there. And at that altitude it can do a
multiplicity of missions ranging from communications, data, optical,
weather sensing," Raburn said.
"Think of it as a Tesla Model S, with wings," he
said, referring to the electric car. Raburn, who was previously the CEO
of Symantec Corp and the president of Microsoft Corp's consumer products
division, said that Titan has flown a scaled-down prototype of the
plane.
Facebook is interested in having Titan build
11,000 of its Solara 60 model drones for its Internet.org project,
according to the TechCrunch report.
Facebook is not the only Internet company working
on bringing wireless Internet access to developing countries. Last
year, Google Inc announced Project Loon, which aims to use solar-powered
air balloons to beam the Internet to remote regions.
Providing wireless access could help Facebook
ensure that its online social network is among the basic services used
by people in developing economies as they start to use
Internet-connected mobile phones in coming years.
Facebook, which has 1.2 billion monthly users,
has partnered with numerous wireless providers in recent years to offer
free or discounted access to the social network. But some, such as
Vodafone, have balked at waiving their wireless data rates for Facebook.
~ Alexei Oreskovic and Alwyn Scott
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