{"id":18940,"date":"2019-07-03T10:15:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T09:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=18940"},"modified":"2019-07-03T10:21:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T09:21:04","slug":"loons-4g-broadband-by-balloon-project-moves-to-commercial-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/07\/loons-4g-broadband-by-balloon-project-moves-to-commercial-trial.html","title":{"rendered":"Loon’s 4G Broadband by Balloon Project Moves to Commercial Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google (Alphabet) has announced that Loon<\/a>, which is a long-running project that aims to distribute mobile broadband (4G<\/a> \/ 5G<\/a>) connectivity from High Altitude Platforms (stratospheric balloons), will in a few weeks time see its first commercial trial take place in Kenya (Africa).<\/p>\n

The super-pressure, helium-filled and solar powered balloons are designed to drift (controlled) at 20km (12 miles) above Earth’s surface in the stratosphere. From there they can act a bit like a budget Satellite<\/a>, albeit with significantly less coverage and so several balloons are usually required to cover a wide area (e.g. during 2017 one test used 7 balloons to cover an area of 1,000km).<\/p>\n

The balloons are designed to stay aloft for months at a time (one test remained in the sky for 223 days) and it’s possible to relay data, point-to-point, between two balloons at distances of up to 600km. As part of this they use directional patch antennas to transmit their signals to ground stations and 4G<\/a> (LTE) users. Consumers will need nothing more than a standard 4G<\/a> phone to connect to the internet via one of Loon’s balloons.<\/p>\n

As an example, Loon’s technology was recently deployed in Peru<\/strong> to help keep people connected following a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. Loon and Telef\u00f3nica had already been working on a commercial trial of the service to cover remote parts of the Amazon<\/a> region and so were able to redirect some of their balloons toward the problem area.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MiEZfRh-h-s<\/p>\n

Back in April Google also secured an investment of \u00a397m ($125m) from SoftBank\u2019s HAPSMobile to support the commercial development of this technology. In keeping with that we’ve today learnt that they’ve teamed-up with Telkom Kenya<\/strong> in order to conduct their first trial by around the end of July 2019.<\/p>\n

The trial will be essential for proving that Loon can work reliably on a commercial basis. At present there are still plenty of doubters and at the same time Google is facing a lawsuit at home, which alleges that they nabbed a competitor’s balloon ideas all the way back in 2008. The company said it would “vigorously defend<\/em>” itself when the case begins early next month in San Jose, California.<\/p>\n

The approach could also face competition from a new generation of compact Low Earth Orbit<\/strong> (LEO) Satellites in mega constellations. Hopefully Loon doesn’t have its head in the clouds and turns out to be more than just a loony pie in the sky project. Puns.. we have them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google (Alphabet) has announced that Loon, which is a long-running project that aims to distribute mobile broadband (4G \/ 5G) connectivity from High Altitude Platforms (stratospheric balloons), will in a few weeks time see its first commercial trial take place in Kenya (Africa).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,406,60,477],"class_list":["post-18940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uk_isp_news","tag-4g","tag-5g","tag-mobile-broadband","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\nLoon's 4G Broadband by Balloon Project Moves to Commercial Trial - ISPreview UK<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Google (Alphabet) has announced that Loon, which is a long-running project that aims to distribute mobile broadband (4G \/ 5G) connectivity from High\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/07\/loons-4g-broadband-by-balloon-project-moves-to-commercial-trial.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Loon's 4G Broadband by Balloon Project Moves to Commercial Trial - 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