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Alphabet's Project Loon Delivers Internet To 100,000 People In Puerto Rico (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the basic-connectivity dept.

Google announced that its Project Loon internet balloons have delivered internet service to over 100,000 Puerto Ricans who were knocked offline by Hurricane Maria. Engadget reports: It's not a total success, which isn't to be expected after Puerto Ricans' communications infrastructure suffered so much damage. But the team was able to work with AT&T and T-Mobile to get "communication and internet activities like sending text messages and accessing information online for some people with LTE enabled phones," head of Project Loon Alastair Westgarth wrote in a blog post. The team launched their balloons from Nevada and used machine learning algorithms to direct them over Puerto Rico, where they've been relaying internet from working ground networks over to users in unconnected areas. In the post, Westgarth noted that Project Loon has never fired up internet from scratch this rapidly, and will improve their ability to keep balloons in place (and deliver sustained connectivity) as they become familiar with the air currents.

34 comments

  1. Ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it just marketing at this point or is machine learning really required for something like this?

    1. Re:Ignorance by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

      Loon balloons navigate by changing their altitude to reach winds that are going in the right direction. They know what the wind directions are by modeling the atmosphere in the 18 to 25km range. It's rather ingenious.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude in the stratosphere to float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then onto the global Internet.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Project Loon is Google's pursuit to deploy a high-altitude balloon network operating in the stratosphere, at altitudes between 18 km and 25 km. Google asserts that this particular layer of the stratosphere is advantageous because of its relatively low wind speeds (e.g., wind speeds between 5 and 20 mph / 10 to 30 km/h) and minimal turbulence. Moreover, Google claims that it can model, with reasonable accuracy, the seasonal, longitudinal, and latitudinal variations in wind speeds within the 18-25 km stratospheric layer.

      Given a reasonably accurate model of wind speeds within the 18-25 km band, Google claims that it can control the latitudinal and longitudinal position of high-altitude balloons by adjusting only the balloon's altitude. By adjusting the volume and density of the gas (e.g., helium, hydrogen, or another lighter-than-air compound) in the balloon, the balloon's variable buoyancy system is able to control the balloon's altitude

      Then again the Japanese were able to direct fire balloons through the stratosphere all the way to the US with no computational power at all in WWII

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The balloons didn't do any real damage to the US, but the Americans were worried about biological or chemical weapons being used in the future. So they covered up the fact that the balloons were successfully reaching the US mainland.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The bombs caused little damage, but their potential for destruction and fires was large. The bombs also had a potential psychological effect on the American people. The U.S. strategy was to keep the Japanese from knowing of the balloon bombs' effectiveness.

      In 1945 Newsweek ran an article titled "Balloon Mystery" in their January 1 issue, and a similar story appeared in a newspaper the next day.

      The Office of Censorship then sent a message to newspapers and radio stations to ask them to make no mention of balloons and balloon-bomb incidents. They did not want the enemy to get the idea that the balloons might be effective weapons or to have the American people start panicking. Cooperating with the desires of the government, the press did not publish any balloon bomb incidents. Perhaps as a result, the Japanese only learned of one bomb's reaching Wyoming, landing and failing to explode, so they stopped the launches after less than six months.

      The press blackout in the U.S. was lifted after the first deaths to ensure that the public was warned, though public knowledge of the threat could have possibly prevented it.

      Prior restraint has its uses, even in the USA.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:Ignorance by ledow · · Score: 1

      Just be thankful they didn't replace the local currency with a blockchain!

    3. Re: Ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Thank you! I'm not as ignorant now.

    4. Re: Ignorance by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Confirmed. Your ignorance level has decreased by 5.75%

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    5. Re: Ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Confirmed. Your ignorance level has decreased by 5.75%

      Wait wait, does that mean you're that informative, or above AC is not very ignorant?

    6. Re:Ignorance by Immerman · · Score: 1

      In fairness, the Japanese balloon navigation was limited to maintaining a certain altitude range in order to stay within the recently discovered jet stream. Ingenious, but not really comparable to a balloon that's actually navigating using the different wind currents at different altitudes.

      On the other hand, it doesn't seem like there's any real need for machine learning either, except as a long-term cost-cutting strategy. Balloon navigation isn't exactly a high-stress, fast-reaction endeavor - I bet one person sitting at a computer with a detailed wind-map could control at least several dozen.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    7. Re: Ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait wait, does that mean you're that informative, or above AC is not very ignorant?

      Could it be both?

    8. Re:Ignorance by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      In fairness, the Japanese balloon navigation was limited to maintaining a certain altitude range in order to stay within the recently discovered jet stream. Ingenious, but not really comparable to a balloon that's actually navigating using the different wind currents at different altitudes.

      True.

      On the other hand, it doesn't seem like there's any real need for machine learning either, except as a long-term cost-cutting strategy. Balloon navigation isn't exactly a high-stress, fast-reaction endeavor - I bet one person sitting at a computer with a detailed wind-map could control at least several dozen.

      Machine learning is kinda cool. And I guess you can handwave it by saying the intent is to deploy hundreds or thousands of balloons, at which point being able to automate would be more cost effective than tens or hundreds of pilots.

      Another thing that's I like about it is that you could mount windspeed sensors and GPS on the balloons themselves. So they'd each sample wind speed and direction as they moved up and down. And you'd use those measurements to correct the model.

      I.e. a swarm of balloons could both use the model and at the same time correct it.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    9. Re: Ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could it be both?

      I wish I knew, my confusion level is OVER 9000!

    10. Re:Ignorance by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Indeed. And if you've got GPS (and I'd assume you must, if you're trying to use an independently sourced weather map), you hardly need windspeed sensors. After all balloons travel at windspeed and GPS can calculate your speed pretty accurately, while sensors would usually read zero except for gusts and shear speeds while transitioning between currents.

      That said, I could imagine gustiness data might be very useful for a sophisticated enough model. While we're at it though, it seems like temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. sensors would be far more immediately useful. And if you have swarms of these operating over an area for a long period of time, you could gather an extremely detailed long-term weathermap which might help considerably in building better atmospheric models.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  2. roncansan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm currently on San Juan Puerto Rico. I don't know a single person who have receive internet from project loom. To the the 100k, is unreal, just a way the project has field.

    1. Re:roncansan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm currently on San Juan Puerto Rico. I don't know a single person who have receive internet from project loom. To the the 100k, is unreal, just a way the project has field.

      How would you know if your phone is connected to a balloon vs a tower? Maybe you posted via a balloon.

    2. Re:roncansan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google did the same thing in Arab Spring, bragging about a voicemail-to-tweet gateway that nobody used. I expect this effort was almost useless to Puerto Rico, but useful to Google in that they learned a lot: the "last 20% of the problem." If that's true, it's too bad they weren't honest about it because, later and elsewhere when they actually do roll something out that works well, there will be nothing different for them to announce. Dishonest celebration makes me feel disrespected as an engineer. It's particularly sad when the dishonesty includes internal Google PR. The Loon team is probably forbidden to discuss the performance of their test. I feel bad for the Loon people who, I'm sure, are quite good at keeping their spirits up and realizing how close they probably are without sycophantic PR intervention, but when you can't even tell others "it doesn't work yet," you must feel like a fraud even when you aren't exactly one yourself, you just work for frauds.

  3. Fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll catch me one of their 'loons and then I'll have Internet for life!

  4. Translation: For one whole day by darthsilun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The balloons have been within range of 100K people.

    Not 100K people have actually used it. Or even been able to use it, if they even knew about it.

    1. Re:Translation: For one whole day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kind of like Elon Musk providing power to 35 kids in a hospital that is in range of 3,000 kids.

    2. Re:Translation: For one whole day by ebrandsberg · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the implication is that some AT&T and T-Mobile towers are online BECAUSE they were able to leverage Loon to connect, i.e. your cellphone itself wouldn't be working in areas without it.

    3. Re: Translation: For one whole day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of the CEO of the last company I worked at. He would use phrases like "our user base is approaching 1 million" when our user base was around 5,000.

    4. Re:Translation: For one whole day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I think it's very unlikely to work that way. It would defeat most of the purpose for which Project Loon was designed if it actually had that limitation so I expect its radios reflect from phones to a central uplink, it would require modifying each cell site to uplink via Loon like send-guys-in-truck, install-new-antennas modify, if your assumption is correct, and the cell sites would still need power to work which would shrink Loon's relevance.

    5. Re:Translation: For one whole day by ebrandsberg · · Score: 1

      Except this IS what is said in the article: "Project Loon announced today that it has worked with AT&T and T-Mobile to successfully deliver basic internet to over 100,000 Puerto Ricans to the internet". This implies that if you have a mobile phone, it is somehow using Loon for internet access, implying that the towers are involved, unless they have fitted the project Loon baloons with LTE transmitters as well, which is possible. In either case, people don't need to know they are using Loon if they are using their cellphones to connect.

  5. B. Hussein Obama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ofr the rock furt the presidents of the UNITED STATE

  6. Perfect name for the project by Topwiz · · Score: 1

    They have to be loons to be providing internet access to people who don't even have electricity.

    1. Re: Perfect name for the project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You didn't know? Google's phones run on souls now. iPhone captures it through your face.

  7. Re: The Absurdity of Claiming to be an Atheist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...And the three letter agency tries to distract us all with nonsense once again.

  8. Google can censor the entire internet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We can't have people finding out that the 'holocaust' is a lie, can we... www.codoh.com

  9. Are you illiterate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's not a total success, which isn't to be expected after Puerto Ricans' communications infrastructure suffered so much damage". So you expected it to be a total success? Or are you illiterate? I guess you "could care less".

    1. Re:Are you illiterate? by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      You can also parse that 'which' as, "but a total success". That makes the sentence: "It's not a total success, but a total success isn't to be expected after Puerto Ricans' communications infrastructure suffered so much damage".

      English isn't the most precise language in the world, simply one with high utility and popularity.

  10. Aaaand then the power went out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm think the inhabitants would rather have 100% power before they get their internet.

    1. Re:Aaaand then the power went out by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Food and water would probably be nice, too.

    2. Re: Aaaand then the power went out by JoeRobe · · Score: 2

      Agreed, but Alphabet isnâ(TM)t a utility provider. Iâ(TM)m betting that many folks who have a (charged) phone appreciate access to information that they didnâ(TM)t otherwise have. And the ability to at least text family and friends.

      --
      The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
    3. Re:Aaaand then the power went out by jiriw · · Score: 2

      I don't know... There are whole continents in this world where internet is wanted (and available) more than 100% (stable/abundant) power. The worst of your power problems you may be able to tackle locally and relatively easily if you're a bit resourceful (use some solar cells that still work, use a car battery, re-purpose a bike with a dynamo and use 'home training' to charge your cellphone...).
      No equipment for the few data pipes still available in such situations (satellite frequencies) or laying emergency infrastructure (whether it's over amateur radio frequencies, or pieces of scrounged copper wire) is a lot harder to 'fix'.
      I agree a roof, water and something nutritious enough to keep yourself alive does take precedence. But then it's communication (and by extension, internet) before power for me...

    4. Re:Aaaand then the power went out by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      I don't know... There are whole continents in this world where internet is wanted (and available) more than 100% (stable/abundant) power. The worst of your power problems you may be able to tackle locally and relatively easily if you're a bit resourceful (use some solar cells that still work, use a car battery, re-purpose a bike with a dynamo and use 'home training' to charge your cellphone...). No equipment for the few data pipes still available in such situations (satellite frequencies) or laying emergency infrastructure (whether it's over amateur radio frequencies, or pieces of scrounged copper wire) is a lot harder to 'fix'. I agree a roof, water and something nutritious enough to keep yourself alive does take precedence. But then it's communication (and by extension, internet) before power for me...

      There's an old episode of Bizarre Foods where the host visits a family that lives in a floating village on a flooded river in Vietnam. No power, but they used an old car battery to charge cell phones (one even rang while they were in the middle of nowhere fishing). They don't need access to reliable electricity; the cost/benefit for that just isn't there. But being able to power a cell phone or a light is a much better return on investment in many developing societies as it allows them to communicate, have access to information, and, in the case of a light, allows for a lot more time for reading/studying/etc

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil