Google believes it has the answer in the shape of a network of internet-beaming balloons in the stratosphere as part of the company’s forward-looking Project Loon.
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Now only around one in three Indonesians are connected to the internet, and connections are often “painfully slow”, the company said.
Alphabet aims to bring the Internet within the reach of a few 100 million people in Indonesia through its Project Loon balloons flying 20 kilometers above the earth.
Project Loon is part of Alphabet’s secretive X division, where the company experiments with far-off technologies dubbed “moonshots” such as its self-driving auto technology. “Indosat is always committed to provide digital connections for the sake of improving the quality of life up to the remote areas”. However, internetsociety.org estimates Indonesia ranks 135th in the world with 15.8 percent internet user penetration.
Project Loon envisions providing internet services via high-altitude balloons that act like floating mobile towers. Indonesia will be the fourth destination for testing the project. Two days later, Google began a pilot experiment in New Zealand, where about 30 balloons were launched. The balloons pass around the signals within the network and back to the ground. Traffic from the balloon network then transfers to the base station of each local operator. Large areas of Indonesia are also hard to access due to poor transportation and infrastructure links.
Project Loon has already entered a collaboration with the government of Sri Lanka and signed a memorandum in regard with this project, as an important but cautious step of the process.
Once on the edge of space, the balloons will be twice as high as commercial jets, above bad weather and barely visible to the naked eye, Google says. The geography of Indonesia is ideal for this Project, as it has more than 17,000 islands, which is too hard to implement broadband and telecommunication.
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.
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Mr Cassidy added to the explanation by saying “The Company needs about 300 or more balloons so that it can float all around the world”.
