Loon Launches Its First Commercial Internet Service in Kenya
High-speed commercial internet service is operated by Alphabet's Loon (Google's parent company) and Telkom Kenya, the third-largest telecom operator in East Africa.
With the AI-powered high-altitude balloons, this service brings the highest speed possible and coverage of 50,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles)
Inaugurating the service, Information Minister Joe Mochiro said:
"Kenya is the first country to have twenty stations in the sky, now we will be able to extend this service to the whole country in a very short time."
This technology has been used before, however, it has never been used commercially before.
U.S. telecom operators used balloons to connect 250,000 people in Puerto Rico after the 2017 hurricane and that was a successful test too.
The project aims to bring cheap 4G internet to rural areas (where the internet services are still not working or may not available). It has been working on it for almost a decade.
"We are effectively developing a new level of the mobile network around the world."
West Gareth said the services cover an area of about 50,000 square kilometers in the western and central parts of the country.
"Airborne base stations will have a lot of coverage, about 100 times more than a traditional cell phone tower. Large and light balloons will be fitted with solar panels and batteries that will fly in the air."
They (the internet balloons) were launched from a facility in California and Puerto Rico that will be controlled by helium from computers at the Lone Flight Station in Silicon Valley and its direction will be determined by pressure.
They also have artificial intelligence software that can navigate flight routes without interference and it reduces the risks.
