Google’s Project Loon Enters Carrier Testing This Year

Google works on multiple ambitious projects and Project Loon is one of them. The company aims to bring the internet to the remote regions of the world through Loon which utilizes high-flying balloons that travel the world. The balloons have gone through a rough development phase and it has now been confirmed that they will enter carrier testing later this year.

The development phase has been particularly tough for Google as it struggled to find a balloon design that could be cheap to produce and yet durable enough to predictably navigate the stratosphere.

“We busted a lot of balloons,” said Astro Teller, head of Alphabet X, as he showed off some of the Project Loon balloon designs at the annual TED conference in Vancouver.

Google went through many designs until it finally came upon one that can not only be made cheaply but also navigate precisely. The design it has picked has already travelled around the world 19 times in just over 187 days last year, Teller revealed at the conference.

The internet technology itself has advanced enough to provide 15 Mbps access to the remote regions of the world. The next step is to see how Project Loon works when delivering real internet service to end users. For that purpose it’s going to conduct tests with carriers in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Talks with other carriers around the world are already underway.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: Google, project loon