Google’s Project Loon Internet Balloons to Take Flight Over Indonesia

Google has partnered with Indonesia’s three mobile operators, PT Indosat Tbk (ISAT), PT Telekomunikasi Selular and PT XL Axiata Tbk, to begin testing its Project Loon balloons to deliver internet access to remote regions of the country.

Although the project is still being funded primarily by money that Google makes from digital advertising, it recently became part of an independent lab called X that is run by Google’s new parent company, Alphabet Inc.

“Over the next few years we’re hoping that Loon will help put high-speed LTE Internet connections within reach of more than 100 million Indonesians, giving them access to the limitless educational, cultural, and economic opportunities of the Internet”, Cassidy said.

Google and its partners will deploy hundreds of balloons in 2016 over the country of more than 17,000 islands in an effort to determine where gaps in service lie as part of the tests before full-scale service is launched.

For those unfamiliar with Google’s more “out there” endeavors, Project Loon is one of them. Until now, satellite-delivered internet access has been the only option for many – although the satellite dish installation and data costs can be prohibitively expensive for poorer communities.

The project aims to bring Internet access through special balloons.

A Project Loon graphic describing how the balloons drift in the stratosphere above airplanes and natural weather phenomena.

“We’ve been kind of having an increasing succession of tests: tests for getting balloon flights to work, tests to test connectivity”.

Dubbed “Project Loon”, it is probably exactly what you imagine it to be – a network of balloons, equipped with an array of wireless communication tech, that can be set up in areas with little to no infrastructure and beam the internet to people across large swaths of remote land.

The specific places where people will get a chance to sample Loon-enhanced wireless Internet have not yet been decided, though, and the telcos say it is too early to talk about how exactly the service will be offered or priced to consumers during trials or in future. Mr. Rusli said Loon technology is unproven, so his company has yet to decide how to pay for the service.

Google uses a complex computer model of global stratospheric wind conditions to plot how to launch and steer its balloons so as to ensure there are always enough in the right place to provide service.