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Updated December 15, 2016 14:19:22

The first customer has received a drone delivery as part of Amazon's Prime Air trial in the UK.

Last week customer Richard from Cambridgeshire, in England's east, ordered a streaming media player and - more importantly - a packet of sweet and salty popcorn. Genius.

The delivery took just 13 minutes, with the drone touching down at Richard's home at 2:15pm (local time).

So, how does it work?

First, you place your order

To use Amazon's drone delivery service, you'll need to be located within "several miles" of one of their fulfillment centres - though an exact distance isn't specified.

Your desired items will also have to be stocked within said fulfillment centre.

The order also has to weigh less than 2.3 kilograms.

Once the order is received, it's prepared and packaged by staff before being fed down a conveyor belt and loaded into the drone.

The drone is propelled down an automated track.

And then we have lift off

In the UK trial, the drones are permitted to fly during daylight hours when there are low winds and good visibility at heights below 122 metres.

They're currently not allowed to operate in rain, show or icy conditions.

The drones are fully autonomous and are guided by GPS, so there's no human pilot.

They land on their own too

But you'll have to have a custom landing pad to help them stick it.

Richard's delivery took 13 minutes.

Then you can enjoy your popcorn

You probably got other stuff too. But it's mainly about the popcorn.

When can I expect my drone delivery?

Well, it might be a while.

At the moment, there are only two private customers included in the trial, but Amazon says it hopes to expand that to more customers in the Cambridgeshire area soon.

Amazon says the full service will "deploy when and where we have the regulatory support needed to safely realise our vision".

The when doesn't currently appear to include Australia - Amazon would only say it was working with policymakers in "various countries" when approached by the ABC.

There are, however, development centres for the technology in the US, the UK, Austria and Israel.

So for now, it looks like Australia will be stuck using its drones for more mundane tasks, like tracking great white sharks.

Topics: science-and-technology, retail, united-kingdom

First posted December 15, 2016 11:01:41

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Fancy having something delivered by a drone? Here's how it works

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Updated December 15, 2016 14:19:22 The first customer has received a drone delivery as part of Amazon's Prime Air trial in the UK. Last week customer Richard from Cambridgeshire, in England's east, ordered a streaming media player and - more importantly - a packet of sweet and salty popcorn. Genius.

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Submarine cables are decidedly uncool. But while they lack the flashiness of satellites, it's actually the world's vast network of fiber optic cables that does most of the heavy lifting in keeping our information flowing from place to place.

The map above, by Ben Pollock, is a comprehensive look at the world's cable network, as well as some of the impressive information on bandwidth and maintenance jurisdictions.

The History of Submarine Cables

The first transcontinental cable - laid in 1858 - ran from Ireland to Newfoundland, and made telegraph communication possible between England and Canada.

Though communication was expensive and limited to only a few words per hour at best, the speed of communication was unparalleled at the time.

"Instant" communication was a huge commercial hit, and it prompted a cable laying boom. By the year 1900, there were already over 130,000 miles (200,000 km) of cable running along the ocean floor!

Beyond the Telegram

The first transatlantic telephone cables went into service in 1956, and 32 years later, the first fiber optic cable connected Europe and America.

Fiber optic technology made transmitting massive quantities of information fast and cost-effective. The level of speed has only increased with time - and now cables can transmit 160 terabits per second.
(One common misconception is that most of our information is transmitted through satellites, but fiber optic cables actually form the backbone of the internet, transmitting about 99% of all data.)
Today, there are over 420 submarine cables in service, stretching over 700,000 miles (1.1 million km) around the world. The network is clustered around information economy hotspots like Singapore and New York, but cables connect to just about anywhere.

Remote Pacific islands, and even obscure ocean towns in the Arctic Circle have such connections.

Who's Footing the Bill?

Traditionally, private companies or consortiums formed by telecom carriers owned cables, but that model is changing. Content providers such as Google and Microsoft are increasingly major investors in new cable. Cloud computing is the big demand driver of this new private cable boom.

As more millions more people around the world adopt cloud computing, we'll be certain to see even more cables criss-crossing the world's oceans in the near future.

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Map: The World's Network of Submarine Cables

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Submarine cables are decidedly uncool. But while they lack the flashiness of satellites, it's actually the world's vast network of fiber optic cables that does most of the heavy lifting in keeping our information flowing from place to place.

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Ramesh Raskar: Imaging at a trillion frames per second

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Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look "around" corners or see inside the body without X-rays.

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Microsoft is working to build the world's first, truly scalable quantum computer.

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Three weeks after London's transit body rejected the company's licence, the company has filed an appeal, earning it the right to continue operating for the time being.

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The questions Australia should really ask about face recognition

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When your face gets added to a massive, searchable database, there's much more than national security at stake. How ready are we for the era of biometrics?