The various threads are coming together to establish High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) as a prominent layer of future wireless services. This is due in part to a Japanese consortium led by Docomo and Space Compass Corporation that is investing $100 million in AALTO HAPS, a subsidiary of Europe’s Airbus. Japan has picked up the baton for HAPS after a checkered history that has involved several high-profile failures, such as Google’s Project Loon. The move is significant in backing HAPS for more than just relatively niche monitoring applications, or as a fill-in to provide mobile connectivity temporarily, for major remote engineering projects for example. The Japanese project is intent on deploying HAPS for broadband services and Direct to Device (D2D)…