Google called its plan to deliver broadband to remote areas via a phalanx of high floating balloons in the stratosphere Project Loon not because it is a silly idea, but because it rhymes. Or so we are told, although actually it could well be that the balloons will be a forerunner to more robust purpose designed vehicles a bit like drones capable of staying airborne for longer.
But that rather depends on how Google’s balloons work out, for it may be that it is cheaper to replace these as they wear out than to develop more robust and expensive aircraft. Cost is after all one of the advantages claimed over the other alternative of two way satellite, which has been used for broadband access in some parts of the world. But there are other factors, since satellites have a longer lead time and once up in the air are usually fixed and cannot readily be redeployed, while balloons can be moved around. Also because of their relatively low cost and short lifespan of up to 100 days, balloons can be effectively transported at quite short notice just by putting up replacements in a different place.
Although ambitious, Project Loon is not totally new and does have some previous experience to build on, since the European Union sent up a free floating balloon in the stratosphere 37 miles above northern Sweden in 2005 to demonstrate broadband wireless access, in a project called Capanina. The difference is that Loon is a much larger scale and commercial venture so Google has had to assess costs, scalability and ruggedness. Use of the stratosphere makes sense since it is effectively a half-way house between space, where there is no air to move or sustain a balloon, and the troposphere, which is the stage for earth weather where winds at altitude are too strong and unpredictable for sustained broadband service via balloons. In the stratosphere winds are relatively light and vary quite predictably in both strength and direction with further height. This provides some scope for moving balloons around without needing much energy, just by changing their altitude. However to enable navigation some means of propulsion is required, so the balloons will be equipped with a small propeller engine powered by solar panels, given virtually uninterrupted sunlight. There is also no risk of interference with either commercial, aircraft, which fly at about half the height planned for the balloons, or satellites, which are above the stratosphere.
The concept has been tested and Google has just put up another 30 balloons, gathering experience of their movement and how best to manipulate them. It has found they tend to drift around in packs and so Google is developing algorithms to optimize their movement automatically to ensure full coverage over the target area. Inevitably balloons occasionally go astray or burst, so that a measure of redundancy is needed with more than would be required to deliver the desired bandwidth. Rather than using traditional cellular or digital terrestrial protocols, Google has developed its own to cope best with the conditions. The signal is bounced between balloons until a suitable point is reached for transmission to the ground for relaying onto the Internet via a base station.
Each balloon has a coverage area of 1,250 square Kilometers, so around 200 would be needed to embrace an area the size of New Zealand. However bandwidth is another factor, given that the balloon network is meant to serve just areas of quite low population density. One target area for which balloons might not be suitable is the Antarctic, where the high latitude makes access to geostationary satellites that tend to be at low latitudes difficult. With a permanent population of less than 5000, capacity would not be an issue, but coverage would since these people are scattered around scientific bases all over the continent, which measures 14 million square Kilometers. That would require about 10,000 balloons to cover, hardy cost effective for such a small population.
It is then a case of horses for courses, with small cheap satellites at higher latitudes being considered for the Antarctic under a project called Antarctic Broadband. But for other smaller, but more densely populated regions, balloons could provide a flexible and scalable option. For Google it is all part of a broader strategy to deploy some of the infrastructure that delivers its services. In this sense it is not just a publicity stunt, unlike more off beat projects like Driverless Cars and Google Glass that have more to do with boosting the stock price than the core business related to Internet search and ad serving.
With initiatives like Loon it is competing more squarely with its key competitors such as Microsoft and Apple, all looking to harness their infrastructure and ecosystem for advantage. Google has several other more important, but slower burn infrastructure projects, such as Google Fiber to deliver gigabit speed broadband services in parts of the US, and also White Spaces to use gaps in existing digital terrestrial and mobile spectrum, again with an eye on rural access.
Perhaps more interesting and significant than all of this is a recent development not from Google itself but Samsung, its partner over Android devices and possibly also emerging OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs. Samsung recently announced it had successfully tested the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. This enables so called 5G mobile communications at speeds up to several tens of Gbps per base station, which of course means that a huge amount of extra backhaul capacity will be needed.
The significant aspect is that this heralds Samsung’s ambition to be a leading player in telecommunications infrastructure as well, although for now as a partner of Google, with Apple as their main mutual adversary. For Google Samsung’s accelerating pace of innovation is welcome at present, helping boost and extend its device strategy. Project Loon or possibly a suitable successor could play an important role here by extending broadband coverage and demand for gadgets to access Internet services, albeit only at 3G speeds for now, to large numbers of people in developing countries.