Google is deploying a 35 solar powered balloons that will give network access across increasingly remote regions of Kenya by floating stratospheric balloons through one of its moonshot projects called Loon.
Loon is an auxiliary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google is the company that is working on providing a 4G remote broadband support to remote areas. Today, there are so many people in this world with no access to internet and the are a wide number of explanations why this is the case. Two tech powerhouses, Google and Facebook have taken on a big infrastructure project to bring more undersea internet cables to Africa. In the recent past Facebook has partnered with local telcos to subsidize the costs of free internet access for African consumers.
Loon is partnering with Telkom Kenya to provide a service that will traverse nearly 31,00 square miles across Kenya delivering mobile internet speeds of up to of 4.74 mbps uplink, and downlink speed of 18.9 mbps, and a latency of 19 milliseconds for everything from emails, web browsing, voice calls via WhatsApp and YouTube with up to 35,000 early users connected, according to the partners.
The company actually began testing its service earlier this year, with numerous clients associating with the system without acknowledging it during those tests, and Loon says it has served more than 35,000 clients and offered the types of assistance recorded during those tests.Here a couple of things to note with the service as there as still limits to this project. The balloons is subject to vagaries of wind speeds and directions among other things despite the fact that Loon utilizes advanced machine learning algorithms to overcome these challenges. Since the service is solar-powered, it'll just be accessible between 6am to 9pm local time.
The hope is for the pressurized balloon called Neptune to effectively give coverage up to 200 times the reach of average cellphone tower. With this mobile operator partners can easily cope with seasonal or fluctuating customer demand. Since the onset COVID-19, reliable connectivity has become a necessity and this makes Loons mission incredibly significant.
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