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Kenya To Use Alphabet's Balloons For Rural Internet (reuters.com)

Kenya will reportedly use Alphabet's system of internet balloons to connect its rural population to the web. The balloons, known as Project Loon, were developed by Alphabet's X, the company's innovation lab. It was recently used by U.S. telecom operators to provide connectivity to people in Puerto Rico after a hurricane last year. Reuters reports: Joe Mucheru, the information, communication and technology minister, told Reuters on Wednesday that project representatives were holding talks with local telecom operators on the deployment of the technology. "The Loon team are still working out contracts and hopefully once that is done, we can be able to see almost every part of the country covered," he said. With more than 45 million people, Kenya's major cities and towns are covered by operator networks, but vast swathes of rural Kenya are not covered. "Loon is another technology that is being introduced that the licensed operators hopefully can be able to use," Mucheru said, adding it would help the government meet its goal of reaching everyone. "Connectivity is critical. If you are not online, you are left out."

38 comments

  1. Here's hoping for success! by GerryGilmore · · Score: 3, Informative

    ANY technology that can start spreading internet access to more people at less cost is unequivocally a GoodThing(TM).
    Heck, even here in North Georgia, USA, I'd LOVE to have this as an option. You see, I'm at the mercy of sole-provider Windstream.
    Nuff said.

    1. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      Didn't they deploy some for Puerto Rico? I wonder how well that has been working.

    2. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We'll see. If the balloons or an upgrade thereof don't contain one or more hidden cameras spying on the people I'll be really surprised. Not to mention all the tracking of actual 'net traffic. Careful when you say "ANY" technology.

    3. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite well, but remember it was a limited test on an FCC experimental license. Just google.

    4. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It may be unpopular to ask, but why exactly is it such a GoodThing(TM) that people in rural Africa have internet access, which objectively is capable of delivering equal parts good and evil? Amazon delivery? Facebook? Google AdSense? I don't mean to be classist, or racist, but it seems to me that the first world is flying off its axis thanks to the net. If the first world can't handle the gifts within, how can we expect those in rural parts of the third to do so? I almost rather they'd take it away from us all, let alone infect the world with more. :-/

    5. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Labarna · · Score: 2

      I am living in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Windstream is the sole provider and we get DSL that delivers 140kbps max.

    6. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If experience in other third world countries holds here, 80% of the bandwidth will be streaming porn and movies. Probably the rest of the bandwidth will be Facebook and Twitter. So this is progress?

    7. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed, I can't wait to be emailed by 238 random princes of Kenya and claim my cut of several million dollars from each of them!

    8. Re:Here's hoping for success! by not+flu · · Score: 1

      If it does the same to population growth there as what developed nations are experiencing, yes.

    9. Re:Here's hoping for success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ANY technology that can start spreading internet access to more people at less cost is unequivocally a GoodThing(TM).

      Yes. 419 scam capability should be a human right.

      Wake me up, when Eternal September ends.

  2. Bach made math, not music. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It had no groove, no rhythm. It was just math in musical notation.

    And played with the bassless screeching and weak instruments of the classic.

    Entirely missing the point of music in favor of snobbery.

    As a child of the children of immigrant "negroes", you are a disgrace, and as a child of these white children, you insult them too.

    Now go ponder how you failed so much at life, that you will cling to this scapegoat for the rest of your life, even if that very act is what keeps it ruined.

    1. Re:Bach made math, not music. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 0

      Thump your drum, moron.

      Go ahead. Thump your drum some more. On.

  3. Re:Not a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Valid points. Free society is great. A society that forces you to associate with those you don't care for is not a free society. Live and let live is a good plan for any society. If I don't like they way you look or think or your music, I shouldn't have it forced upoin me. That's fascist.

  4. Welcome to slashdot Kenyans! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    news for nerds ... and people who care about iPhone colors ... and email theme colors ...

  5. People get internet access by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    ... and Google gets to track and log all their online activities from day one. It’s a win win!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  6. Kenya to get sucked dry of data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kenya is not uninteresting to the paranoid psychopaths running the U.S. Don't underestimate the effects of manipulation of networks, data, and information, now that a U.S-governed commercial and political entity controls your internet.

  7. They should use Trump-Baby balloons by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Nothing helps the schools better than the Internet being litterally supported by a 'stable genius'.

    1. Re:They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you hate mongerer have noting else in your heads?

    2. Re: They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Everyone has their fetish bro. For some it is Russian hookers pissing on your face. Or others, it is the humiliating overthrow of a despotic, narcissistic tyrant.

    3. Re: They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looner Republican fetish?

    4. Re: They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 0

      Not really 'others'. The same people who cream their jeans in delight at the 'Russian hookers pissing' visualization are the ones fretting about President Trump.

      It's the same ropey dopes, trying to drag the whole of us down into their sewer.

    5. Re: They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "despotic, narcissistic tyrant." What? I thought Hillary lost!?!?

    6. Re:They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing helps the schools better than the Internet being litterally supported by a 'stable genius'.

      It is always a goal for any employer to be able to do more with less people or less qualified people. Similarly we are certainly seeing a test of the nations architecture with our current leader. Can it really handle the strain of having a bombastic narcissistic crap throwing monkey at the wheel or will the wheels fall off? You couldn't really write a plausible script where the president actively tries to destroy a country that was more effective at it than reality. You'd be laughed off. Of course with reality its impossible to really tell the difference between maliciousness and incompetence. He certainly lacks no shortage of either.

    7. Re: They should use Trump-Baby balloons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you always present the figments of you deranged mind as facts?

  8. Can't help to think "Project Loom" had been better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But I guess they are a bunch of loons!

  9. So internet most important?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know even today some places have no real effective sanitation systems, or even reliable source of electricity or even running water. But let's focus on getting them up to speed on YouTube, Facebook, and install some balloons that can provide them with internet. Which on the surface seems a bit unstable and not sustainable in the long run. Sometimes you wonder if companies like Google are simply clueless on what is really needed. They think providing internet will save the world and yet for thousands of years nobody had it and did just fine.

    1. Re: So internet most important?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It can bring them p0rn and then maybe they can stop breeding like crazy

    2. Re: So internet most important?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mmm... ive spent several years with well drilling projects in the Sahel. Its made an improvement in child mortality but that's about it. What they really need is surface transportation infrastructure, not days, but at least they don't have much for Google to steal.

  10. Porn by QuadEddie · · Score: 1

    I wonder what effect all that black on white porn viewing is going to have

    1. Re:Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at what it's done to culture in the West. :-/

  11. burning man // alphabet balloon at 60,000 ft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is a good thing, more internet with less costly infrastructure ----

    alphabet had a balloon over the black rock desert about 9 months ago cruising at 60,000 feet.. picked it up on flightradar24.com -- thought it was for a better burning man event in 2018... who knows..

    most of those balloons too were over south america in the Ande's doing some testing and across western US until some lawsuit in the US caused them to pause for station identification....

    great stuff...

  12. A better use. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Put cameras on the Kenyan balloons and use them to search for Obama's birthplace
    (ducks)