Wi-Fi From The Sky

Makarand writes "Some companies think that the answer to providing ubiquitous broadband access is to have telecom gear float high in the sky. High-tech blimps, called Stratellites, could be used by ISPs to carry their telecom equipment as high as 13 miles, far above commercial air traffic and turbulent weather according to this article on ABC News. At this height the Stratellite could serve an area of around 300,000 sq miles. Subscribers will merely need to put a small antenna outside and get broadband. The Stratellites will be perfect spheres and carry all electronic equipment within the Kevlar fabric and will not have any external fins or gondolas attached. Companies are already developing Wi-Fi sytems that could operate over tens of miles and these systems could be used on these Stratellites."

Comments

Advanced Technologies Group

[madhippy]

ATG came up with a similar idea some time ago - doesn't look like they've got as far as a prototype yet tho - their design is a more usual blimp shape rather than spherical mind ...

ATG

Personally, I'd love one of their large Skycat's - imagine a beo.. I mean it'd make a great house ...

I understand how it works......

[jcrb]

If you look on the web site of the manufacturer you can find this picture where it is clear that those things on the side of the sphere are combination propeller/stearing vane modules.

BTW does anyone else think that the picture on their front page makes the thing look like the Death Star (tm) :)

Re:ABOVE commercial traffic?

[RaboKrabekian]

You can't use cell phones in flight not because it might interfere with the avionics of the airplane, but because it costs the cell phone companies too much money to have you hopping to a new tower every two seconds.

If cell phones were really dangerous in ANY way to an airplane in flight, do you think they'd be allowed?

Long range WiFi, Stationkeeping + Some more links

[StCredZero]

To make this viable, they will need Phased Array Wi-Fi as covered here earlier. This will increase their range to many miles. There is also a paper about stationkeeping for a group of such balloons.

Some more links on the story itself:

• 21st Century Airships
• Yahoo (German, Translated)
• www.telekom-presse.de (translated)

Re:68000ft

[MtViewGuy]

I think for proper stationkeeping of these communications balloons they're going to have to fly them even higher--as high as 75,000 feet.

There are two reasons for this: 1) the jet stream has strong winds even in the 60,000 feet range; and 2) some thunderstorms have cloudtops as high as 65,000 feet!

Re:ABOVE commercial traffic?

[thrillseeker]

If cell phones were really dangerous in ANY way to an airplane in flight, do you think they'd be allowed?

The use of cell phones in flight is not allowed. It's not that they're known to be dangerous - it's that they're not known to be safe.

The risk of introduction of small stray currents into the instrumentation used for flight is not worth it when there are 400 lives at stake. The last thing an airline pilot needs to worry about is whether the instrumentation that he carefully checked at a known point on the ground is now lying to him in the air because some bozo that is pissed because he didn't get the free upgrade is chatting on his cellphone in Row 39B.

Testing could be done to determine the risk of cellphone use inflight - but it'd be expensive to test all the known configurations with various quantities of transmitters of various unkownn qualities in various positions throughout the flight, and it's a much more controlled situation to provide an alternate service using tested transmitters.

Turn your cell phone off in an airliner and read a book for a few hours.

No, they'll float. It's all they need to do.

[Spamalamadingdong]

You can't make them stationary....
Let them float, they get blown around (world) by the jet streams. (Lots of surface area * 100 m/s winds).

Yes you can. The jet streams are phenomena of the troposphere. The stratosphere, where these things would float, is stratified (thus the name) and has little wind.

There was another company looking to piggy-back on the National Weather Service's twice-daily balloon sounding probes to provide cellular service in unserved areas. The latex balloons climb to extreme altitudes, and then often hang for 24 hours or more without moving much (according to the article) before bursting. If the relay balloons float at similar altitudes, they would require little power for stationkeeping.

Tie them to ground.. The tie down cable becomes an aviation hazard.

Big deal, you bar air traffic from the area. We may soon be doing the same to generate electricity, with tethers perhaps 3 miles long; check out gyromills for a jolt to your weltanschauüng.

Volume needed to lift ~10 pounds to 75,000 ft requires a balloon 30 to 40feet in diameter.

Have you looked at the balloons used to loft cosmic-ray, infrared and the cosmic-background radiation experiments lately? Boomerang flew at 120,000 feet, thus requiring a balloon several times the volume required to loft a payload to a mere 65,000 feet. There is a lot of established expertise, and while this can't be considered a trivial exercise it isn't going to require much new work.