BEIJING, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Online retailer Alibaba has started testing drone delivery in China, beating its U.S. counterpart, Amazon, to the punch on using the technology.
Alibaba released a short video online showing how its drone delivery service will work. It is testing the technology for three days, ending Friday.
Customers must live within one hour of the company's Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou warehouses in order the qualify for the delivery method.
The test program is delivering tea with a maximum weight of 12 ounces to customers. The company says the method can increase the speed of deliveries.
The program comes a little more than a year after Amazon announced plans to launch drone delivery. Those plans, though, haven't come to much fruition, after the Federal Aviation Administration in June banned drones from delivering packages.
The agency later granted permission to four companies -- not including Amazon -- to use drones for commercial purposes.
