As I’d predicted in my blog article
entitled “SF
Express Drones in China Deliver Cake and Zookal Drones deliver Rental Textbooks
- How Drones and smartphones in Jamaica can revive the Postal Service via
Personal One-Day Delivery Service”, Amazon
would pioneer the use of Drones to do package delivery.
And that pioneer is none other than Amazon’s
CEO Jeff Bezos, who broke the news on CBS
60 Minutes program of his intention to give Amazon
Prime customers 30 minute Delivery from Fulfillment Centers upon purchase via
Drones as stated in “Amazon
testing 'octocopter' package-delivery drones”, published December 1, 2013
5:28 PM PST by Steven Musil, CNET News and
“Delivery
by drone: Amazon plans to deliver goods in 30 minutes using octocopters”,
published December 2, 2013 By Trevor Mogg, DigitalTrends..
The new service, dubbed Amazon
PrimeAir, will require FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) approval and is only in
the testing phase, with a debut timeline in the next four of five (4-5) years! The
PrimeAir Octocopters (8-rotors) can carry packages that are 5 lb and have a
range of 10 km, as stated by CEO Jeff Bezon on CBS News 60 Minutes.
The news may surprise many but not us Jamaicans.
Even here in Jamaica, Drones are already being used by a local Company, Skycam Jamaica, to film events and do
aerial shots for local Broadcasters News segments as noted in my Geezam blog article “Skycam Jamaica
Aerial Photography marks possible Revival of Package Delivery in the Jamaica
Postal Service”.
Jamaica may eventually have
Drone Deliveries – America slow to adopting Commercial Drones
That’s right folks; Jamaica for once, even for only a brief moment and
for a few more years, is currently
ahead of the Technology Curve as Americans mostly worried about Government
Surveillance, dislike the idea of what Drones imply and have thus become superstitious
and distrustful of Technology.
And we may still be, as our JCAA (Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority) has
already approved Skycam Jamaica camera
toting Hexacopters (6-rotors), so Octacopters (8-rotors) for Delivery purposes
by Shipping Couriers or even the Jamaica Postal Service to make their operations
more cost effective via automating Package Delivery isn’t as far-fetched as it
sounds!
Even the Chinese have beaten the Americans to this!
SF Express in Shanghai, China already has Octacopter Drones making 6 kg
package deliveries and Zookal in Melbourne, Australia is testing the automated
delivery of textbooks to Australian College students as described in my blog article
entitled “SF
Express Drones in China Deliver Cake and Zookal Drones deliver Rental Textbooks
- How Drones and smartphones in Jamaica can revive the Postal Service via
Personal One-Day Delivery Service”.
Still it is first in America and thus puts Amazon way ahead of the curve!
Amazon PrimeAir - Amazon
playing Catch-up as Airpak Express launches DealBug
The US of A has a lot of catching up to do as the rest of the world
innovates past them! Amazon is really
playing catch-up to the Chinese and they know it!
Trust me, it was only a matter of time before someone in the US of A
decided to do this, be it Amazon, Best Buy
or even the USPS (United States Postal Service). Never mind the fact that the
FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) is slow on approving this, declaring it won't
be until 2015 before Drones can get approval for Commercial usage. To me the
main problem with this idea may be Vandalism; Americans and Jamaicans are a
rough and tumble bunch.
We’re not a civilized as the Chinese or Japanese, albeit in defense of Amazon PrimeAir and the idea in general, the
Drones are for Amazon Prime Customers who
are a little better-off enough to pay US$79 for one year worth of same day
shipping and sensible enough to not go near that whirly-gig when she’s coming
in for a landing. I’d worry more about hillbillies, conspiracy nuts and idlers
on the ground making it a habit to shoot drones out of the sky with everything
from shotguns to slingshots!
So until then, anything is possible in the rest of the World as it
relates to our usage of Drones, as we have none of the Hang-ups about
Government Surveillance like our American Counterparts.
We just need 3G Internet coverage to be uniformly everywhere and all
Jamaicans to have smartphones for this to be economically feasible.
In the meantime, such a Delivery service could be launched soon by
Jamaica’s largest Shipping Courier Service and my favourite, Mailpac, who
recently launched Dealbug, their Virtual
Online Store that’s partnered with Scotiabank to provide a single point of
pre-approved one price purchase for anything online as noted in “Mailpac
opens up virtual retail store”, published Friday, November 29, 2013, The Jamaica Observer.
Part of Dealbug includes
door-to-door delivery service, mainly done by roving Pink Delivery Vehicles.
But the idea of Drones may be a part of their plans for Dealbug, as my sources have told me, to
provide same-day delivery at a lower cost.
If true, they’ll become only the second company in Jamaica aside from Skycam Jamaica to launch a commercial usage
for Drones, apparently to be based on PC and Laptop users, as we’re not yet so
sophisticated in our smartphone usage!
Thus this story deserves more development later on my blog or even on the
Geezam blog as I go to Mailpac and
ScotiaBank to see if I can get an exclusive on this story. In the meantime, as
a former CSA (Customer Service Agent) for the Amazon,
EMC2 (Earth’s Most Customer Centric) Company, PrimeAir ups the ante
against the Brick and mortar companies as they can now make deliveries in
real-time.
Go Amazon PrimeAir!!!
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