On Saturday in New Zealand Scientists released up to 30 helium-filled test balloons flying 20-km above Christchurch from technology giant, which also carrying antennae linked to ground base stations. In the beginning of the process or project Loon it is hope to eventually launch thousands of balloons at a time to provide wi-fi Internet to remote parts of the world, which will allow to cover more than four billion people with no access to get online. Bravo!
This project could also be effective especially in the case of natural disasters, when the existing communication and networks are completely affected. According to the “Project Loon is an experimental technology for balloon-powered Internet access,” the company said on its latest project from its clandestine Google (x), “where we work on radical, sci-fi-sounding technology solutions to solve really big world problems”.
“Balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, can beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster,” it added. “It is very early days, but we think a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, might be a way to provide affordable Internet access to rural, remote, and underserved areas down on earth below, or help after disasters, when existing communication infrastructure is affected.”
By listening they say, the work of this wi-fi internet is to connect by ground stations to the local Internet infrastructure and beaming signals to the balloons, and these are self generated as they are solar panels. Once mentioned earlier in my tech blog that the balloons, which will be in stratosphere is twice as high as commercial airliners and good thing is it will be barely visible to the naked eye. Forming this will help us and be able to communicate with each other, forming a global network in the sky.
Now the Users side they will be able to use internet facility by joining the Internet antennae to the side of their house which can send and receive data signals from the balloons passing overhead. For trial experiment they are planning to take 50 people and these were randomly selected and were able to link to the Internet. The first person who get lucky to get Google Balloon Internet access was Charles Nimmo, a farmer and entrepreneur in the small town of Leeston who signed up for the experiment.
According to the Charles Nimmo he received Internet access for about 15 minutes before the transmitting balloon which he was counting on as it floated out of range. Well hope this experiment get positive results as it will bring easy access to everyone even for those who are unaware of internet.
