Google testing Balloons to Provide Free Internet to Remote Areas

Google X, the secretive lab behind projects like Google Glass and Google’s self-driving cars, announced its latest project today: balloon-powered Internet access for those areas of the earth where regular terrestrial Internet isn’t a good option. Google started testing these balloons, which are meant to provide Internet access comparable to 3G networks while sailing the stratospheric winds, in New Zealand.

Google says, it’s calling this initiative “Project Loon.” Google, however, believes that it has found a way to let these balloons “sail freely on the winds” and steer them by moving them up or down to catch the right winds. Idea here is to one day have these fly these around the world. Google says it’s solving this problem “with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power.”

Currently, Google says it is using 30 balloons in this pilot project and about 50 testers in New Zealand are using the service on the ground.Google aims to fly the balloons in the stratosphere, 20km (12 miles) or more above the ground, which is about double the altitude used by commercial aircraft and above controlled airspace.

Google, and its chairman Eric Schmidt in particular, have long been talking about the importance of getting those two-thirds of the earth’s population who don’t currently have Internet access online. Project Loon is meant to help solve this problem, Google notes. Not only could it bring Internet access to areas where today’s technologies don’t work well (jungles, archipelagos, mountains), but it seems Google also hopes that this balloon-powered network can help bring down the price of Internet access in many countries where it’s currently unaffordable for many people.

Google is launching balloons into near space to provide internet access to buildings below on the ground.

About 30 of the superpressure balloons are being launched from New Zealand from where they will drift around the world on a controlled path.

Attached equipment will offer 3G-like speeds to 50 testers in the country.

It says that balloons could one day be diverted to disaster-hit areas to aid rescue efforts in situations where ground communication equipment has been damage

Google calls the effort Project Loon and acknowledges it is "highly experimental" at this stage.

Each balloon is 15m (49.2ft) in diameter - the length of a small plane - and filled with lifting gases. Electronic equipment hangs underneath including radio antennae, a flight computer, an altitude control system and solar panels to power the gear.

Google says each should stay aloft for about 100 days and provide connectivity to an area stretching 40km in diameter below as they travel in a west-to-east direction.

"The idea behind Loon was that it might be easier to tie the world together by using what it has in common - the skies - than the process of laying fibre and trying to put up cellphone infrastructure."

Google now plans to partner with other organisations to fit similar equipment to other buildings in countries on a similar latitude, so that people in Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Australia can also take part in the trial.

However, they typically remain airborne for up to a few days at a time rather than for months, and are not as wide-ranging. One expert cautioned that Google might find it harder to control its fleet than it hoped.