Can a balloon send away an internet service connection? Google's Alphabet has recently made a department dealing with creating the first commercial service in Kenya, located in Africa. The company's Loon division has created tennis court-sized balloons that said to hold up 4G LTE internet connection. This technology would be the new medium of companies to send the internet, even to the most rural places in the world.
Kenya now has internet!
The New York Times first reported that high-altitude balloons are expected to fly out in Kenya on Tuesday, July 7. These tennis court-sized balloons are made to extend the internet connection of thousands of people at the first commercial internet service in the country.
Loon, a company under Google's Alphabet, already launched 35 balloons in recent months. These balloons will cover around 50,000 square kilometers in the country, including the capital city Nairobi. The high-altitude balloons will hover about 12 miles up in the stratosphere. These balloons can stay in the air for over 100 days before coming back down to Earth.
The installed 4G internet already reached 18.9Mbps back in June, along with an uplink speed of 4.74Mbps and a latency of 19ms. It is tested a range of services - including email, voice and video calls, web browsing, WhatsApp, and YouTube viewing - on its service.
The balloons, made from polyethylene sheets, are powered by solar panels and controlled by software on the ground. While up in the air, they act as "floating cell towers," transmitting internet signals to ground stations and personal devices.
Why Kenya?
Despite the great Loon project, the company was still criticized for why Kenya was chosen as the host country for the Loon project.
Some tech experts think that Kenya is not the right place to do the project. Compared to other more rural places, Kenya reportedly has an estimated 39 million out of 48 million people with a better internet connection. However, Loon still sees Kenya as the best spot for the project.
"Kenya is an ideal place for us to begin this new era of stratospheric communications," Alastair Westgarth, Loon's chief executive, said in an interview conducted by email. "The country has been incredibly innovative about finding new ways to connect unconnected populations. As a new, innovative technology, this is a great fit."
The Kenyan authorities, however, think that the project is still the best thing about their community. Though African countries are now reaching a larger scale of internet users, access to the internet connection to all the citizens is still deprived by most people. Not only that, but the charges for internet services are insanely high for all Africans.
