The Wall Street Journal recently reported the firm plans to spend $1 to $3 billion to launch a fleet of internet satellites. The satellite network would initially include 180 small satellites and might later double that number.
The project is part of Google’s wider plan to provide internet access to remote areas using solar powered drones and high altitude balloons. They recently purchased drone company Titan Aerospace and launched Project Loon to experiment with a squadron of stratospheric, internet providing balloons steered by global trade winds.
Why is a software company so interested in building infrastructure? A Google representative explained to the WSJ, “Internet connectivity significantly improves people’s lives. Yet two thirds of the world have no access at all.”
The firm dominates search and operates the two most visited sites on the web (Google and YouTube). A healthy fraction of those billions may well choose Google’s products—if only they can gain access to them.
Project Loon balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather. In the stratosphere, there are many layers of wind, and each layer of wind varies in direction and speed. Loon balloons go where they’re needed by rising or descending into a layer of wind blowing in the desired direction of travel. By partnering with Telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum Google has enabled people to connect to the balloon network directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices. The signal is then passed across the balloon network and back down to the global Internet on Earth.
A year after Project Loon became public, its leaders told Wired that Google should be able to provide LTE data connections “in one or several countries” within the next year.
The company hopes to grow a fleet of 300 to 400 balloons that can continuously circle the earth at an altitude twice as high as commercial planes, and stay up for 100 or more days. Already, the balloons have traveled more than a million and a half kilometers, and circled the world in as little as 22 days, which is a world record.
And they are delivering Internet speeds of 22 megabits per second to ground antennae and 5 Mbps to phones.
Video courtesy Project Loon.
Photo credit: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty Images