![Facebook CEO Zuckerberg addresses the audience during a media event at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park Facebook CEO Zuckerberg addresses the audience during a media event at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/1500_facebook.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
The social network’s founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed Thursday that the company’s ambitious plan to bring Internet access to the parts of the world without it will use drones to do. A year after announcing the Internet.org project, Zuckerberg said Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is making progress as it works to “build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone.” The project will do nothing less, he said, than “beam internet to people from the sky.”
“Over the past year, our work in the Philippines and Paraguay alone has doubled the number of people using mobile data with the operators we’ve partnered with, helping 3 million new people access the internet,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page. “We’re going to continue building these partnerships, but connecting the whole world will require inventing new technology too.”
Facebook’s Connectivity Lab could become a major competitor with Google’s Project Loon, which is using helium balloons to beam Internet access down to people below. Reports recently surfaced that Facebook is mulling an acquisition of the drone company Titan Aerospace.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Eyewitness Accounts From the Trump Rally Shooting
- Politicians Condemn Trump Rally Shooting: ‘No Place for Political Violence in Our Democracy’
- From 2022: How the Threat of Political Violence Is Transforming America
- ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
- How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com