Question: How long do you think it will take for human beings to have the technology to connect drones with mobile data? ( what I mean is that I know we can connect drones to our phone but only to a certain extent)

Boris Galkin answered on 3 Nov 2020:

Telecom companies and the scientists who work with mobile phone networks (like me!) have been talking about connecting drones to mobile phone networks for about 5 years now. Early experiments suggested that the LTE mobile phone networks have a lot of problems with drone connections (mobile phone networks use radio waves to connect to smartphones, these radio waves behave very differently at street level where people usually are than they do in the air where the drones fly). Because of the interest in connecting drones to mobile phone networks (as well as other technologies like Internet of Things and self-driving cars) the telecom companies came up with the next generation of mobile phone networks called 5G.

Unlike LTE which was created to work specifically with smartphones, 5G is designed to work with smartphones, Internet of Things devices, smart vehicles, VR headsets, and other technologies that may show up soon. Current experiments suggest that 5G networks can do a good job connecting drones with mobile data. The question then is: how long will it take to build the 5G towers? This year Ireland received its first 5G towers, but these are located in city centers such as Dublin. If we want to be able to safely fly drones in the countryside we would need 5G towers covering rural areas in Ireland, which is unfortunately still years away.