LA Business Journal: New Heights for Drones?

January 22, 2018

AeroViroment Inc. opened 2018 with plans to build a drone that flies higher and longer than any it has built before – a solar-powered plane that could soar in the upper atmosphere for weeks or months at a time and carry a load of telecommunications transmitters.

The company laid out its latest goals as part of a Jan. 3 announcement of a joint venture with Tokyo-based telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp., called HAPSMobile Inc. The new partners will join an ambitious field of projects – including a flying-wing in the works at Facebook Inc. and a balloon-based experiment by Alphabet Inc. – that aim to lift telecommunications transmitters up to 65,000 feet above sea level in order to grab a piece of the broadband market in developing countries.

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