China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has announced that it has begun testing drones for deliveries of products and orders  to hundreds of customers in the mainland.

Reports said the testing will only last three days and will not go beyond its one-hour flight within its distribution centers in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.

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Alibaba officials said the drone-based deliveries have the potential to speed up their services and will permanently form part of its business very soon.

Some companies have likewise begun  privately testing this type of aircraft in speeding up their delivery services. These companies include Google, Amazon, and parcel service, UPS.

Reports said Alibaba is using its drones in the three-day trial to deliver a specific type of ginger tea and some herbal supplements, with a maximum limit of 340 gram or 12oz.

The three-day experiment was reportedly being carried out by an Alibaba Taobao division, a marketplace similar to E-bay that connects sellers and buyers and that will involve around 500 customers.

Analysts said Taobao is delivering good results despite its limitation in scope. A TechAsia blogger said Taobao is delivering real goods to real customers and that no other western company has made such giant leap into this kind of service that Alibaba has launched.

"That said, which company will actually roll out a fully functioning drone-based delivery service remains to be seen and [such a deployment] is still a long way off," Tech Asia blogger Paul Bischoff said.

Drones may be effective in delivering goods faster but local aviation officials are reportedly not in agreement with these companies using drones due to its security risks.

Alibaba officials have yet to address the security issue that comes with the use of drones in its businesses. Reports said Google had to transfer its drone-delivery testings to Australia due to heavy restrictions on the use of drones set by the United States.

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