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drone delivery service would cut transportation time by half and
save operating costs.
Delivery Drones in Other Countries
While China was the world leader in drone delivery of consumer
products at the start of 2020, companies in twenty-six other
nations around the world were in various stages of drone test-
ing programs. A few—in France, Finland, Iceland, Australia, and
Singapore—were looking to grow their already established but
limited drone delivery operations.
In December 2019 the French postal service, La Poste, began
delivering packages by drone to remote villages. By using drones,
the postal operator was able to keep up a regular service even
in winter, when heavy snowfall often makes access to villages in
the mountains difficult. The service began in the small village of
Global Drone Delivery Guidelines
In January 2019 the World Economic Forum released a report called The Ad-
vanced Drone Operations Toolkit: Accelerating the Drone Revolution. This is a
set of guidelines, recommendations, and lessons learned for governments look-
ing to roll out commercial drone operations. It was developed with the assis-
tance of government agencies and private companies worldwide.
The tool kit offers help in many areas, including suggestions for crafting
reasonable safety regulations. The goal is to avoid rules that prevent steady
progress but still account for safety needs. The information contained in the tool
kit has been gathered from the experiences of existing drone delivery projects. It
is a sort of It blueprint that can be adapted to meet each country’s needs. “Now,
governments can learn from the real-world success of world-leading drone de-
livery projects in Africa and Europe to develop their own national oversight,”
says report author Harrison Wolf.
Quoted in Greg Nichols, “Davos Develops Drone Regulation How-To for Governments (and the FAA Should
Pay Attention),” ZDNet, January 28, 2019.
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