New Delhi: Google’s Project Loon, an initiative to enable internet access to remote areas in developing countries through hot-air balloons, is aiming Indonesia as it is in a move to partner with three major Indonesian telecom operators for a nation-wide testing set to commence next year.
Top executives from Telkomsel, XL Axiata, and Indosat made an appearance at the announcement, made by Alphabet President (and Google co-founder) Sergey Brin, in California.
Indonesia is the fourth country following Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia, where Project Loon will beam down internet access to smartphones.
The balloons fly about 20km above the Earth’s surface, moving with the wind to reposition, and forming one large communications array. This technology is particularly useful in countries like Indonesia, which is a collection of about 17, 00 islands with mountains and jungles in between, making it difficult to install cell towers or fibre optic cables.
According to Google, it intends to connect about 100 million Indonesians under Loon, tying up with telecom operators to effectively expand their coverage, rather than purchasing unused spectrum of their own.
The team is hoping to launch more than 300 balloons over the course of 2016, to eventually blanket the entire world. Once they manage to cover the Southern Hemisphere, Loon will start taking customers willing to enter the beta project. It’s also worth noting that the balloons Project Loon is sending out now are better than their original models conceptualised in 2013, allowing setup in 15 minutes and broadcastng speeds of up to10Mbps.