Google Balloons Take Flight In Vast Remote Broadband Launch

Leo King, Forbes
Published: September 24, 2014

The secretive Google X operation sees itself as firmly on target with a plan to launch high altitude balloons across the southern hemisphere, as it aims to provide wireless Internet coverage to billions of people in remote areas.

Google has said that by next year, potentially billions of people across rural areas in southern Africa, South America, Australasia and the most southerly parts of Asia could have wireless Internet connectivity – thanks to its Internet-transmitting balloons.

In spite of the proliferation of smart phones in developing countries, many rural areas are poorly served by wireless connectivity. Google has the eventual target of reaching all of the astonishing five billion people globally who do not yet have internet coverage (only two billion are already connected, according to estimates)  – with LTE broadband direct to cellphones and via local, ground-based antennae.

The move is the latest in the high speed race between technology and communications firms to lead this rural broadband provision. Last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said his company, too, is working fast with telecoms firms to build new data compression and infrastructure technology in a major scheme to offer global internet connectivity.

Google’s Project Loon Balloons Are Taking Flight In A Bid To Provide Wireless Connectivity To The Five Billion People Without Internet (Photo credit: Google)

Google’s Project Loon, as it is called, is the latest in a string of diverse and ambitious experiments, which the company calls ‘moonshots’ – all squarely aimed at putting the company at the forefront of tackling serious global concerns. Google X is also working on driverless cars, delivery drones, smart contact lenses and glasses, and aids for various conditions including Parkinson’s and Essential Tremor.

The MIT Technology Review reports that Astro Teller, head of the Google X lab, told delegates at the EmTech conference in Cambridge: “In the next year or so we should have a semipermanent ring of balloons somewhere in the southern hemisphere.”

It remains unclear what sort of coverage Google will provide in practice and how long it will take for widespread strong coverage, but the move is a clear statement of intent.

Watch a video of Google’s Project Loon balloons here

The high tech balloons can fly at 60,000 feet, so  they are out of range of planes – which normally fly at 30,000 to 40,000 feet – except of course during the balloons’ launch and return. They are powered by solar panels and each will likely stay in the air for stretches of up to 100 days at a time, according to theMIT Technology Review. Testing has already taken place in the US, New Zealand and Brazil, in collaboration with local cellphone companies.

Google’s Project Loon website says the balloons’ control center uses software algorithms to determine where they should go, then moves them into a layer of wind blowing in the right direction. “By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network”, it says.

As Google X continues to experiment, its leaders have been in high demand.TechCrunch reported yesterday that the division’s co-founder, who worked on driverless cars and Google Glass, has left the company to focus on his Udacity online education startup. And two weeks ago, former Google X vice president Megan Smith was hired by US President Barack Obama to be the country’s chief technology officer.