Google’s
Project Loon has been in the works for some years now. It is an
initiative to launch balloons in the sky with internet-enabled circuitry
to provide Internet access in remote areas. Google has posted a video
on Project Loon’s Google+ page hinting at scaling up the project to
launch it in many more countries.
Project
Loon uses balloons that travel 20 km above the earth. Using software
algorithms, Loon determines where the balloon needs to go depending upon
the wind. It started as a pilot project in New Zealand wherein 30
balloons were launched. Last year in November, Google announced that
Project Loon has the ability to launch up to 20 balloons per day.
According to a Google+ post, it was possible because the autofill
equipment had improved and the time to fill the balloon had come down
under 5 minutes. The balloons can now last up to 10 times longer in the
stratosphere, than they did in 2013 and a lot of them have lasted over
100 days – with 130 days being a record, Google had said. Google is
carrying out trials with cellular operators in Australia, Latin America
and New Zealand.
In
the video above, project lead Mike Cassidy takes us behind the scenes
of Project Loon and how the team is addressing the challenges they are
facing. “The goal of Project Look is to bring internet to almost 2 out
of 3 people in the world who don’t have internet access today,” says
Cassidy.
In
the video Cassidy talks about increasing capacity of manufacturing the
balloons, about mission control system to keep track of the balloons and
about the different kind of teams associated with the project. He
touches up on the challenges such as durability of the balloons and
scaling up the project to different countries.
The
number of days that the balloons can stay in the air has increased to
100 days. Also the process of taping the balloon used to take 3 to 4
days initially, but now with Google’s in-house manufacturing unit, it
takes a few hours to complete taping on one balloon says Cassidy. While
launching the balloons was a manual job initially, now Google can launch
balloons via automated cranes and dozens of balloons can be launched in
a day using these cranes.
Google
has partnered with telecom service providers in test countries to
provide LTE cellular coverage. The idea is to connect every remote
corner of the world and Project Loon engineers track the balloon right
from the time it is launched to the time it is in the air to the time it
is taken down. The coverage areas are also neatly divided so as to
ensure the reach of the connectivity isn’t hampered.
According
to a news report in February in The Times of India, Google was in talks
with the Indian government to introduce Project Loon in India. Mohammad
Gawdat, VP of business Innovation at Google X told the news site that
the company planned to launch a commercial format that would allow
coverage on “every square inch” on earth by 2016. He also said that the
company was working ‘closely’ with telcos and governments across the
world to achieve this.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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