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This article was published on November 7, 2016

T-Mobile’s parent company is working on a drone defense system


T-Mobile’s parent company is working on a drone defense system

Deutsche Telekom, the German owner of mobile provider T-Mobile, is broadening its views by working on a drone defense system for critical no-fly-zones.

Because of drones’ increasing use in various recreational activities, there’s been an increased demand in preventing them from flying to places they’re not allowed to go. The Dutch police has recently started using trained eagles to take down drones, but some companies are already thinking on a larger scale.

The defense system has been developed to keep the flying objects from entering protected areas like airports and sports stadiums, having started product development after a request from soccer club FC Bayern München. It will reportedly have a wide variety of use cases, like car manufacturers trying to shield test racing tracks from snooping drone eyes that are taking pictures of new models.

It’ll be interesting to see what the mobile operator’s take a system like this will be, but there’s hoping it might be a significant upgrade from manned defense — companies like SkyWall already have that covered by selling drone takedown guns. These aren’t that useful for defending sizeable locations, so there’s a big chance the system will be based on electromagnetic pulse technology for taking down the pesky robot birds.

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