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Project Loon: 4G Balloons Provide Internet Access

Project LoonInnovative 21st-century technologies have motivated NGOs and tech companies around the world to develop apps and other online ways for people in developing areas to stay connected. Information provided on the internet or transmitted through SMS assists people worldwide with acquiring resources and employing techniques to advance education, healthcare and agriculture. Unfortunately, some areas remain untouched by the benefits of staying connected because their remoteness prevents internet availability — at least until now. Google’s sister company, Loon, is rising to the challenge of providing internet to remote populations in Africa and recovering populations affected by natural disasters using solar-powered 4G balloons with Project Loon.

Project Loon

Project Loon, which became one of Google’s “moonshot projects” in 2011, began launching balloons by 2013 and partnered with Telkom Kenya in 2018. Following this deal, the solar-powered balloons were tested on 35,000 customers covering over 50,000 square kilometers. The goal was to provide adequate connectivity to underserved and disadvantaged communities, beginning with Kenya. Loon executives stress that providing creative, low-cost solutions is the greatest way to help people, particularly those in rural areas where connectivity could be life-changing. Their passion stems from an intense desire to “challenge the status quo” by “[relying] on knowledge and empathy to make wise decisions.” Initial findings suggest that Loon balloons cover up to 100 times more area than typical cell towers and deliver wifi strong enough for video callings, surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, downloading apps and messaging other users.

How it Works

Loon 4G balloons are essentially flying cell phone towers but they are much lighter and more durable. They have the ability to withstand temperatures below -90°C and to remain steady amid violent winds. After being launched in the United States and traveling through wind currents across the world, the balloons begin their 100-day stays in Kenyan airspace, providing internet download speeds up to 18.9 megabits per second in partnership with AT&T.

Although the balloons heavily depend on wind currents as guides, they also have specially designed, state of the art Flight Systems that consist of three main parts: the balloon envelope, bus and payload. The envelope, made of polyethylene plastic, forms what people typically recognize as a balloon. The bus holds solar panels where the battery is charged, the altitude control system that navigates winds using GPS and the safety gear (parachute) for landing. The payload is the internet provider that houses the LTE antenna and the gimbals which liaise between the balloon and the ground. The balloons also depend on lift gas to loft them 20 kilometers into the air and to assist during the descent alongside local air traffic controllers. Loon specifically designates predetermined landing zones where the balloons are either recycled or prepared for reuse by on-site recovery teams.

After the balloons are collected, they are closely analyzed for holes and tears, allowing examiners to alter their designs and make the balloons stronger if necessary.

Disaster Preparedness

Resilient balloons can go a long way in addressing disaster preparedness and this also presents a significant opportunity for Project Loon to make a difference. Natural disasters often wipe out infrastructure, leaving populations disconnected when communication is more vital than ever. Because Loon balloons fly at such high altitudes and do not require activation within close proximity, there is greater potential for connectivity.

For example, Loon’s balloons were deployed during an earthquake in Peru where they covered nearly 40,000 square miles and were used following a devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico. The company’s role in connecting families in the wake of disaster “is a lifeline” for those affected and can have a life-changing global impact.

Loon Chief Executive Alastair Westgarth has expressed concern about the effects of COVID-19 on disconnected populations. Because the virus has obstructed normalcy, connectivity could be the only way to continue education in developing nations. There are numerous agriculture, healthcare and education resources that, with internet connection, can preserve progression, one of Loon’s immediate goals.

Future Flights

To date, Loon has launched 1,750 4G balloons that have spent more than 1 million hours in the stratosphere and connected over 35,000 users, with the most successful balloon remaining aloft for 300 days and counting. The ultimate goal is to maintain a permanent 35-member fleet over eastern Africa in the hope of connecting and empowering developing nations.

– Natalie Clark
Photo: Flickr

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Internet Access: Reducing Global Poverty

Reducing_Global Poverty

In a speech to the United Nations in September 2015, Mark Zuckerberg stated, “When communities are connected, we can lift them out of poverty.” During his talk, the Facebook CEO and founder asserted that increased Internet access can aid in reducing global poverty.

According to the World Bank’s 2016 World Development Report, 60 percent of the world’s population do not have access to the Internet. In the United States alone, 60 million people do not have Internet access at home. However, for the rest of the world’s population, technological advancement has provided enormous levels of wealth and development.

A recent report by Price Waterhouse Cooper’s consulting and strategy firm, Strategy&, states that giving internet to the world could bring extraordinary results. If the 4.1 billion people without Internet were given access, 500 million people could be brought out of poverty.

For those in poverty, the Internet provides a multitude of opportunities, including jobs, access to global current affairs and education. In 1998, the World Hospitals and Health Services Journal released an article discussing the advantages of Internet access, arguing that “Access to information is an essential condition to development.” Almost twenty years on, researchers and institutions are still looking to the Internet as a technique for reducing global poverty.

In developing and impoverished areas, most individuals cannot afford the cost of the Internet. According to the World Economic Forum, only 20.7 percent of Africa’s population use the Internet, compared to 77.6 percent of Europe’s population.

The Head of Africa for the World Economic Forum, Elsie Kanza, discussed the way in which technological advancement could help bring “vast improvements in the way the region governs, feeds, lives, educates, trades and interacts with itself.”

On a recent “Intersections” podcast, the Brookings Institute recently discussed the issue of poverty and internet access. Laurence Chandy, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, stated, “Digital technology is changing what it means to be poor because it’s bringing poor people out of the margins.”

With projects such as Internet.org and Project Loon, tech giants such as Google and Facebook have begun to tackle the goal of creating widespread internet access for reducing global poverty.

– Isabella Farr

Photo: Flickr

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Project Loon Helps Internet Access Soar to New Heights

project_loon
Project Loon, a product of Google X, the semi-secret research and development facility run by Google, is an innovative operation providing inexpensive or free wi-fi to people living in remote rural areas around the world via a fleet of huge helium-filled balloons floating in the stratosphere.

According to Google, these balloons can deliver widespread economic and social benefits by bringing internet access to the 60 percent of the world’s population who don’t have it. A large portion of those 4.3 billion people live in rural or extremely remote areas where telecommunications companies haven’t found it worthwhile to build cell towers or other infrastructure.

Here’s how Project Loon will work: steered by wind and equipped with solar panels with enough power to charge the battery for use at night, each balloon will be able to power itself using entirely renewable energy sources.

Constructed out of a thin plastic similar to a heavyweight trash bag, the balloons float in the stratosphere, a layer of the earth’s atmosphere stretching about 32 miles above the surface. Flying twice as high as airplanes and operating above the weather, the balloons help mobile operators extend wireless networks into more sparsely populated and remote terrain.

With a lifespan currently lasting just over 100 days, each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area of about 50 miles in diameter using LTE wireless communications technology. LTE, short for long-term evolution, is the standard for wireless communications in high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

In order to use LTE, Project Loon partners with telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the internet directly from their phones or other LTE-enabled devices. The signal is then passed across the balloon network and back down to the global internet on Earth.

In Indonesia, Project Loon is teaming up with the country’s three largest wireless carriers in 2016 to test its high-altitude, wind propelled balloons. Their lofty goal is to deliver internet coverage across large pockets of the nation where 83 percent of the population currently is without internet access.

If successful, Project Loon’s collaboration with Indonesian mobile operators Indosat, Telkomel and XL Axiata would result in speeds fast enough to surf websites, stream videos or make purchases. It is estimated that 100 million people in Indonesia who are not currently connected to the internet will gain access through Project Loon.

“This is a way of changing the world,” says Mike Cassidy, Project Loon’s leader in an interview with MIT Technology Review. For just hundreds of dollars per day, the operation of one Loon balloon should be able to serve a few thousand connections at any time.

For a school principal in a rural area of northeastern Brazil, where Linoca Gayoso Castelo Branco School resides and internet service is nonexistent, she experienced the benefits of the balloons firsthand.

“It was just for some minutes, but it was wonderful,” says ­Silvana Pereira. That day’s lesson on Portugal was enhanced by Wikipedia and online maps. “They were so involved that the 45 minutes of a regular class wouldn’t be enough to satisfy their demand for knowledge,” says Pereira.

And that is just the beginning.

– Kara Buckley

Sources: Google 1, Google 2, Google 3, Technology Review 1, Technology Review 2, USA Today
Photo: Wikimedia