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Loon's Balloons Will Fly Over Kenya in First Commercial Telecom Tryout (ieee.org)
Kenya runs on mobile phones. And yet, outside of major cities like Nairobi, the infrastructure for mobile telephony is lacking. That's why, in 2019, telecommunications provider Telkom Kenya will begin turning to high-altitude balloons built by the Alphabet subsidiary Loon to provide mobile phone service. From a report: "High-altitude balloons are actually a very reasonable way to approach this problem," says Sal Candido, Loon's head of engineering. "They're high, they cover a lot of ground, and there are no obstacles." It's simple "but for one thing," Candido adds -- each balloon needs to stay in place in the stratosphere, providing coverage for one area for hundreds of days before being replaced. Candido has been with Loon for five years, long before the effort -- then known as Project Loon -- graduated from X, the Alphabet research and development subsidiary, in July 2018. Candido initially worked on developing the balloons' navigation system, one of the key components needed to address the "one thing" keeping the idea from really lifting off.
The challenge of how to navigate the balloons properly has changed drastically during Candido's time at Loon, because over the years the understanding of how Loon would operate has changed drastically as well. [...] As Loon launched more balloons for its test flights -- the company has now logged over 30 million kilometers -- the engineering team realized that they could control where the balloons would travel. "Sometimes the most obvious answer comes to you much later on," Candido says. "Why don't the balloons just not leave the coverage area?" It turns out that this is possible, at least in most places, for reasonable durations.
The challenge of how to navigate the balloons properly has changed drastically during Candido's time at Loon, because over the years the understanding of how Loon would operate has changed drastically as well. [...] As Loon launched more balloons for its test flights -- the company has now logged over 30 million kilometers -- the engineering team realized that they could control where the balloons would travel. "Sometimes the most obvious answer comes to you much later on," Candido says. "Why don't the balloons just not leave the coverage area?" It turns out that this is possible, at least in most places, for reasonable durations.
literally.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just move somewhere where balloons are not necessary for cell service.
> And yet, outside of major cities like Nairobi, the infrastructure for mobile telephony is lacking.
That's rubbish. The mobile network in Kenya has been mature for years. 8 years ago I routinely found the mobile network in Kenya was better than the south-east (the most prosperous region) of the UK. Any significant town had 3.5G. Places in the middle of nowhere with no water or electricity had EDGE Internet working at the full 250kbps. And that's 8 years ago. I know, because I ran a business on it.
And they become an excellent surveillance device as well.
In fact I imagine the internet access they provide will simply be gravy on top of the lucrative intelligence community finances such a prospect holds.
captcha was lilies... something you might find on all those unmarked graves.
If I didn’t already know this was something that Google had started years and years ago, I would get money that this was yet another weird little venture that Elon Musk had come up with.
Be careful to judge populations. If Ancient Egypt or Babylon was looking at Northern Europe in the year 1400, they'de have labelled them 'a primitive craphole'. Then look what happened from ad 1600.
That's a weird question. Why don't the softwares just write themselves?