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Alphabet's Loon Balloons Just Beamed the Internet Across 620 Miles (zdnet.com)
Loon, the former Google X project and now independent Alphabet company, has developed an antenna system that could create a far greater ground coverage than previously possible. From a report: According to Loon each of its balloons, from 20km (12.4 miles) above earth, can cover an area of about 80km (49.7 miles) in diameter and serve about 1,000 users on the ground using an LTE connection. However, Loon balloons need a backhaul connection from an access point on the ground and without that connection the balloons can't provide connectivity to users on the ground. But on Tuesday the company revealed it had sent data across a network of seven balloons from a single ground connection spanning a distance of 1,000 kilometers, or about 621 miles. It also achieved its longest ever point-to-point link, sending data between two balloons over a distance of 600km (373 miles). The tests were carried out across California and Nevada, with the balloons punting data packets between each other from "desert to mountains and back again", according to Loon.
I'm sorry, this isn't some huge accomplishment.
Adhoc networking using HSMM-Mesh has been a reality on WRT54 hardware for YEARS. It can service multiple connection nodes, more than 1,000, including internet access if available to one or more nodes.
The flying of a GSM MSC/cell tower may be a bit less complex for the end user than having to have an HSMM-Mesh node to attach a network cable to but ham radio guys have been doing this on 2.4 GHz for years.
Also, flying a MSC/Cell Tower isn't all that unusual or novel either. We've been flying such things on fixed wing aircraft or in the back of trucks with crank up towers to provide emergency communications using cell phones for a long time too. Plus, flying HSMM-Mesh nodes on balloons has been done a lot too, to provide data network access to the balloon's GPS and cameras and run QSO's via data the data links.
Sorry Google, I'm not all that impressed..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
80 km diameter = 40 km radius
A = pi*r^2
A = pi * (40 km)^2
A = 5024 km^2
That works out to only one user per every 5 square km. This is the reason cell towers are typically spaced 3-7 km apart in urban and suburban areas. You need them that close to support the typical density of users in a cell. Their actual range if you don't have many users is much larger. GSM is limited to 35 km because it uses timeslices - beyond that a phone's transmission would arrive in the next phone's timeslice. CDMA will work as far out as the phone and tower are able to "hear" each other, which is more likely to be limited by line of sight than by distance (a 30 m tower only gets you about 25 km range before it's blocked by the horizon).
It might be useful in developing countries which don't have many cellular users, but from what I understand even third world countries are rapidly deploying standard cellular networks since it's so much cheaper than stringing up wires. That leaves the only practical use in emergencies if you block regular people from being able to use it, only allowing emergency personnel's devices to connect.
This could change in the future as MIMO becomes more commonplace (it's included in the 5G standard. MIMO basically makes the signals and receivers directional, allowing multiple devices to use the same bandwidth without interfering with each other (too much).