Google launches BALLOONS in bid to bring wi-fi internet to the remotest places on Earth

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June 16: Google has launched 30 balloons into the stratosphere from New Zealand as it experiments with ways to bring affordable internet access to the world.

Nicknamed Project Loon, the internet giant is sending the superpressure balloons 12 miles up into the air, where they will sail around the globe at twice the altitude of aeroplanes.

The helium-filled balloons inflate to 49ft in diameter and carry transmitters that could beam 3G-speed internet to some of the 4.8billion people in the world that are not yet online, supplying an area of about 780 square miles - twice the size of New York City.

 

A Google balloon sails in front of the magnificent Southern Alps following its release from Lake Tekapo on New Zealand’s South Island

 

The project was tested in secret around California’s central valley. In a hangar at Moffett Field airfield, a thin polyethylene balloon was inflated to its full diameter of 49ft

Project Loon was developed in the company’s X Lab by the same team behind Google Glasses and the driverless car. It is hoped it could save developing countries the high cost of laying fibre cables to get online and lead to a dramatic increase in internet access for the likes of Africa and south-east Asia.

Loon could even provide emergency back-up for areas during natural disasters.

This week the balloons, made from a thin polyethylene film, were released from a frozen field near Lake Tekapo on New Zealand’s South Island, where they sailed past the magnificent Southern Alps mountains on their ascent.

’It’s pretty hard to get the internet to lots of parts of the world,’ Richard DeVaul, chief technical architect at Google[x], told the BBC.

’Just because in principle you could take a satellite phone to sub-Saharan Africa and get a connection there, it doesn’t mean the people have a cost-effective way of getting online.

’The idea behind Loon was that it might be easier to tie the world together by using what it has in common - the skies - than the process of laying fibre and trying to put up cellphone infrastructure.’

Fifty volunteer residents signed up to be a tester for a project that was so secret no-one would tell them what it was for.

Technicians came to the volunteers’ homes and attached bright red receivers the size of basketballs that look like giant Google map pins - which every building would need to receive the signal.

One of the most complex parts of the project was hand-building strong, light, durable balloons that could handle temperature and pressure swings in the stratosphere.

Google engineers studied balloon science from Nasa, the U.S. Defence Department and the Jet Propulsion Lab to design their own airships made of plastic films similar to grocery bags. Hundreds have been built so far.

Mr DeVaul said they would not interfere with aircraft because they fly well below satellites and twice as high as aeroplanes.

Google played down concerns about surveillance, emphasising that they would not carry cameras or any other extraneous equipment.

The balloons would be guided to collection points and replaced periodically. In cases when they failed, a parachute would deploy.

The company worked with the Civil Aviation Authority on the trial, choosing New Zealand in part because of its remoteness.

Mr Cassidy said in the next phase of the trial they hope to get up to 300 balloons forming a ring on the 40th parallel south from New Zealand through Australia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.

 

Christchurch was a symbolic launch site because some residents were cut off from online information for weeks following the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people.

Tania Gilchrist, another tester, said she had been lucky to only lose power for ten hours following the quake.

’After the initial upheaval, the internet really came into play,’ she said.

’It was how people co-ordinated relief efforts and let people know how to get in touch with agencies. It was really, really effective and it wasn’t necessarily driven by the authorities.’

Terrain should not be a problem for Project Loon. The balloons could stream internet into Afghanistan’s steep and winding Khyber Pass or Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, a country where the World Bank estimates only four out of every 100 people are online.

There are plenty of catches, including a requirement that anyone using Google Balloon Internet would need a receiver plugged into their computer in order to receive the signal.

Google is not talking costs at this point, although it says it is striving to make both the balloons and receivers as inexpensive as possible.