Tuesday 06 October 2015


Google's 'internet balloons' offer remote areas web access

Google has released 30 balloons above New Zealand in a project to bring internet to remote areas.

The project, created by the same Google X team who made self-driving cars and Google Glass, aims to bring internet to the two-thirds of the global population currently without web access.

A pilot launch this morning in Christchurch, New Zealand, was the first public balloon release and is the beginning of Google's plans to build a ring of balloons that would fly around the globe at twice the altitude of aeroplanes and send 3G-speed internet to the earth below.

Mike Cassidy, director of the plans known as Project Loon, told The Daily Telegraph that the internet balloons were a Google "moonshot" – a radical solution to a huge problem.

He said: "It almost sounds like science fiction when you hear about what our proposal is."

(Photo: Google)

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph yesterday from New Zealand, Mr Cassidy said the balloons, which are shaped like a giant pumpkin and roughly the size of a small aircraft, could solve the problem of internet access world wide.

He said: "I think one of the most stunning facts I've heard in the past two years is two thirds of the world does not have internet access today. Places like China and India, there's over a billion people combined in those two countries that don't have internet access. And then if you look at all the entire southern hemisphere, in two thirds of the countries in the southern hemisphere the monthly cost of internet is higher than the average monthly income for someone in those countries.

"For every 10 per cent additional proportion of the population that gets internet access, their annual GDP, gross domestic product growth, will go up by 1.4 per cent. Most countries in the world, their typical GDP rate is 3 or 4 percent."

Balloon internet could also be used after a natural disaster, like an earthquake or tsunami, when communication systems often shut down.

A Google balloons will bring internet to remote areas, such as mountain tops

The balloons expand as they reach higher altitutdes. When fully inflated, they look like a giant pumpkin.

Mr Cassidy, who has been working on the project for a year and a half, said the balloons would be controlled by raising or lowering their altitude slightly.

He said: "Because at each different altitude the winds go a slightly different direction and a slightly different speed, so you can create this sort of algorithm to tell you if you want the balloons to be covering Christ Church at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, you need to launch them at a certain altitude, and if you're missing a little bit you can just increase or decrease the altitude a little bit and correct it by getting to a slightly different wind direction. And this is a really cool piece of technology we worked on."

The balloons themselves are self-powered by solar panels and can cover an area of about 460 square miles. Users below have an internet antennae they attach the side of their house, with the mobile data from balloons working in a similar way as a hotspot that won't interfere with normal Wi-Fi delivery.

Those balloons released today will travel from west to east off the coast of New Zealand and continue over Chile, Argentina, Australia and eventually South Africa and Uruguay.

Mr Cassidy said Google had not yet considered a business plan but the Loon Project could be affordable for those who don't have internet.

He said: "The cool thing is, the technology we used to build this is mostly the cost of shelf parts, pretty simple plastic film about as thick as a piece of paper, the electronics are sort of off the shelf electronics. So we think there's very good promise of being able to have a service that's affordable and helps people who can't afford internet today."

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