In 2008, Google began to work on one of those ideas that may seem crazy, but that hide great potential: offering internet access through hot air balloons. Nowadays it is easy to cover densely populated areas with a good speed wireless connection: with 5G, its speed can rival that of fiber optics. But in rural and remote areas, even offering 3G or 4G coverage can be difficult. The antennas do not have sufficient reach and the few potential customers who would have the service would not justify the investment. Almost half of the Earth’s surface, therefore, has no connection to the Internet.
Google’s hope was to solve this problem with a fleet of hot air balloons similar to those used in certain scientific investigations. These devices can remain in the air for months, floating between the different currents of the stratosphere. They are not easy to control, especially if you want them to maintain a more or less fixed position, but with several of them moving between the different air currents and exchanging information with each other, it would be theoretically possible to cover large areas with connections of similar speed. those enjoyed in big cities.
Google, which baptized this initiative with the name of Loon (in Spanish it means ‘crazy’ or ‘eccentric’), did the calculation. With three hundred balloons floating at the 40th parallel south, for example, some of the most remote regions of New Zealand, Australia, Chile or Argentina could be given continuous access to the internet, and with speeds close to 155 Mbps. Africa, the Pacific islands or even the seas themselves – where merchant ships and cruise ships would benefit from a better connection – were other potential markets for the company. Over the past ten years, Google’s research and development division, Google X, has flown dozens of these balloons in various territories as a pilot experience , generally with considerable success. There have only been eighteen accidents in the entire history of the project, and none involving casualties. The aircraft tended to deviate more than expected from the desired course, but landed undamaged on almost all trips and after spending several weeks in autonomous flight.
However, earlier this year, Alastair Westgarth, Loon CEO, announced in these words that this is where it had come: “We have found several partners willing to help us along the way, but we have not been able to deliver. with how to reduce costs enough to build a long-term sustainable business. “
Other similar ideas that promised to bridge the digital divide between city and country have also come to nothing. In 2018, for example, Facebook parked a Google-style project. It was called Aquila and relied on autonomous solar-powered drones to provide internet access from the air. These large aircraft were to be able to fly for ninety uninterrupted days. Mark Zuckerberg’s company only made two test flights, both with a duration of less than two hours, but he considered the idea feasible, and reached agreements with several companies to promote it. Doubts about its profitability and technological difficulties put an end to the matter.
The advantages of these projects, collectively known as HAPS (High Altitude Platform Stations), were clear. Flying at an altitude of 20 or 30 kilometers, you do not need any special equipment to capture the signal from the ground. For all intents and purposes they are floating mobile phone antennas. But the complexity that still goes into managing autonomous flying vehicles has hampered operations. Whether we are talking about drones or balloons, keeping them within the required area for long periods of time has been more complicated than previously thought. And it has been proven that more devices would be needed than anticipated, with the consequent increase in costs and the difficulty of handling.
Satellite internet
Ironically, the substitute for these initiatives could be a technology discarded until recently precisely because of its cost: Internet access via satellites. The boom in privately held aerospace companies such as Space X and Blue Origin has dramatically reduced the cost of putting a satellite into orbit. Several companies plan to launch constellations of these devices in low orbit (about 500 kilometers high), made up of hundreds or thousands of units that can offer coverage even in the most remote areas of the planet. Special antennas are needed to connect to them, and the latency of the connections (the time it takes for data to travel back and forth to a server) is of course higher, although within reason.
In some regions of the United States, SpaceX already offers Internet access thanks to its fleet of satellites (it launches dozens a month), which operate under the Starlink trademark. For $ 99 per month (about 80 euros), plus an initial payment of $ 500 for the antenna (the size of a pizza box) and the router, it gives a speed of between 50 and 150 Mbps: less than a traditional fiber connection , but more than acceptable for the usual rural connections in the country, which frequently do not exceed 25 Mbps of download.
As your constellation grows, Starlink will not only provide faster connection speeds; it will also provide internet access to remote regions and, perhaps more importantly, at a price low enough to be a real alternative for the billions of people on the less palatable side of the world. digital divide.
