SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KGO) -- Facebook is looking toward the future and the sky.
On the second day of its F8 developers' conference, Facebook talked about the 1 to 3 billion people with no access to the Internet.
"Radical new approaches to this problem and this basically means going to the sky," said Facebook's chief technology officer Michael Schroepfer.
Facebook's been hinting at this for awhile. Exactly one year ago, they published a video that conceptualized solar-powered planes bringing the Internet to people everywhere. But on Thursday it was clear the concept was moving toward reality.
"This is a solar powered drone," Schroepfer said during Thursday's developer's conference.
It's code name is Aquila.
"60 to 90,000 feet in the air, stand on station for months at a time, and beam down backbone Internet access," Schroepfer said
The technology comes from a British drone startup Facebook acquired with the record for the longest solar-powered flight.
A time-lapse video shows just one of the wing segments being assembled.
"It has the wingspan greater than a 737 plane," Schroepfer said.
The drones fit in nicely with Facebook's Internet.org initiative, an effort to bring the Internet to parts of the world where getting online is prohibitively expensive, or impossible.
"In the developing world, a lot of people have mobile phones already, they have smartphoens, but what they need is cheaper data access," said TechCrunch senior writer Josh Constine
Constine says it's actually a good investment for Facebook.
"The idea is that eventually, if Facebook can become the way people get on the Internet, then they'll become loyal long-term Facebook users and it'll make money from them the way it makes money from everyone, which is through advertising," Constine said.
That may be why Google launched Project Loon, spreading the Internet with hot air balloons instead of drones.
No matter which takes off both will get more people online for less, so it seems things are looking up.