Who wants a LTE/4G data plan for your drone?

Joined
Sep 13, 2016
Messages
41
Reaction score
22
Location
MA NH border
In England the three network gives you unlimited 4G internet for a month for £25 (used to be £15 a few months ago tho) but you get 300 mins and 3000 talk time which is not what I want it for. I use the unlimited 4G for live facebook streaming.

Sent from my Power using PhantomPilots mobile app
 
Well, out here in rural Ireland, we could probably do live streaming at 128 * 80 resolution and 2 frames per second... However hereabouts we have no masts to crash into either, and lots of empty fields and woodland..
 
We already have data plans for tablets, what's so special about data plans for drones? Do you think future models will have SIM cards in drones too? Let's wait that to happen, it will be helpful to track lost drones.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots
 
The only reason I would want LTE on a drone is for flying longer distances. But even with LTE, the latency is much too great to fly via live view with.
 
  • Like
Reactions: liketogethigh
It could be helpful for people who use a wifi-only device for flying, if it allows tethering. I wouldn't want to use it as a replacement for Lightbridge or anything, since even 3G coverage isn't universal, but it would be nice as a redundancy for locating itself.

edit: also, the idea of expanding coverage by drone is pretty cool, although nobody's going to be sending up a fleet of Phantoms just for that (unless they've got a *lot* of spare batteries handy!).
 
Very limited latency soon a thing of the past 5 G on its way in the Northeast,Then widespread thru out the USA.
Okay, but what's the coverage going to look like? Cell companies don't really care about providing ultra fast wireless in the middle of nowhere. Coverage maps always show coverage concentrated to high traffic areas and freeways, the two places I DON'T want to fly. The places I fly I'm lucky to get a bar or two of 700mhz LTE on any carrier. 5G is just going to make coverage worse. The higher the channel bandwidth, the worse the coverage.
 
I agree with the limitations of LTE/4G in rural areas and 5G won't begin real penetration until 2020 but I think the big push will be for cargo drones in metro and suburban areas. Any autonomous vehicle (car, drone) will need network access to safely travel long distances.

The FAA will need to develop a environment where entrepreneurs can design safety and avoidance into the vehicles.

-G
 

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,357
Members
104,935
Latest member
Pauos31