Google is rolling out one of its most ambitious projects yet: Internet-enabled balloons. The lucky recipient of this technology is the archipelago of Indonesia.
Project Loon will attempt to connect billions of people located on the 17,000 islands of the country. "Indonesia is the perfect fit for Project Loon," said Mike Cassidy, project leader for Loon.
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder also said, "Occasionally getting out of communications range is healthy for all of us but if it's part of your daily life and you don't have access to the information and the ability to communicate with people important to you, that's a real disadvantage."
eMarketer said that only 29% of Indonesians have Internet connectivity. Internet speed, as a general observation, is also very slow. This is mostly due to challenging geography and a thinly spread population.
Additionally, the installation of underwater cables is a very expensive task and the only other option, satellite connectivity, is also available to some. Poorer families will find the cost of satellite internet a bit too much so make do with current speeds.
Google is partnering up with three local Internet service providers. Project Loon will also make use of cell "towers." These are really just balloons suspended at 20,000 feet up in the air but will function as cell sites, The Guardian reported.
It will take a lot of balloons to cover the entire archipelago but, if successful, will provide speeds of up to 10 megabits per second, Information Week.
One of the obstacles to Project Loon's success is the fact that many Indonesians actually do not have the devices to access the Internet. As of now, only 1 in 3 Indonesians have access to the Net, Uber Gizmo reported.
The helium balloons are 12 meters high and will fly in the stratosphere at altitudes between 18 and 25 kilometers. Each balloon can provide Internet access over a 40 kilometer diameter. Project Loon will start setting up the balloons in 2016.
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