Working with three local internet providers, Google is trying to
expand in Indonesia by installing helium-filled balloons in the stratosphere
Only 29% of
Indonesia’s 255 million people currently have internet access, described by
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right, as a disadvantage for both information
and communication. Photograph: PR
How do you connect a country made up of 17,000
islands to the internet? That’s the huge infrastructure challenge faced
by Indonesia, and one
that Google hopes to address using its high altitude ‘Project Loon’ balloons.
The Silicon Valley giant
has partnered with three Indonesian internet service providers – Telkomsel,
Axiata and Inmost – to deliver LTE connectivity to remote areas via clusters of
giant helium balloons to places where fixed-line service aren’t available. It’s
part of the the company’s plan to help connect some of the billions of people
around the world who remain offline.
“Indonesia is the perfect fit for Project
Loon,” said Mike Cassidy, project leader for Loon, speaking at Google’s
headquarters in Mountain View in front of a fully inflated balloon.
“Occasionally getting out of communications
range is healthy for all of us,” addedGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin, “but if
it’s part of your daily life and you don’t have access to the information and
the ability to communicate with people important to you that’s a real
disadvantage.”
According to eMarketer, only 29% of Indonesians
have access to the internet and connection speeds are slow, largely thanks to
challenging geography and a thinly spread population of around 255 million
people, which makes it expensive to build a network using underwater cables.
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.
To use Google’s balloon-based offering, people
on the ground only need a mobile device to get online with speeds of up to 10
megabits per second. While Indonesia has close to 100% mobile
penetration, only 23%, are
smartphones, which means that even if the coverage is there, consumers may not
have the devices to access the network.
Google will spend 12 months testing the
technology with its three partners before rolling out a commercial product.
Tariffs have yet to be established. The mobile operators handle the customer
relationship and billing, while Google is simply building the cell ‘towers’ –
balloons 20,000 metres in the air. “We’ll need many hundreds of balloons to
cover Indonesia,” added Cassidy.
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Project Loon was first incubated by the
experimental Google X division in 2011, but was officially announced in June
2013 with a remit to help bring the internet to the two thirds of the world’s
population who still don’t have access. It started with a trial involving 30
balloons over New Zealand. Since then, Google has partnered with companies
in Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka
and now Indonesia to deliver balloon-powered internet access.
Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo had due to
attend the event but later withdrew.
The 12-metre tall helium-filled balloons fly
in the stratosphere at altitudes of between 18km and 25km - twice as high as
aeroplanes. Each balloon can provide connectivity to an area of around 40km in
diameter using LTE wireless communications. People on the ground can connect to
the wireless network using their mobile devices and the balloons will relay the
traffic from those devices between each other and eventually back to the global
internet using high-speed links.
The hundreds of balloons needed to provide
coverage for each area are coordinated and tracked via mission control to
optimally position the fleet to provide the best coverage. Steering is made
possible by moving the balloons to different altitudes - where stratospheric
winds travel in different directions.
“To provide a continuous internet service
you’re talking about a complex choreography where thousands of balloons are
steered and programmed in an automated fashion,” said Cassidy, adding that the
system makes sure another balloon comes into range as soon as another has left.
Not everyone is happy with Loon’s arrival in
Indonesia. The country’s largest telecommunication company, Telekomunikasi,
rejected Google’s plan, arguing that it would undermine its own investment in
fibre-optic infrastructure.“Clearly the project would harm not only Telkom, but
also other telecommunication companies. That means Google would bypass us,”
Indra Utoyo, director of innovation and strategic portfolio, told Jakarta Globe.
Speaking at Google HQ, Telkomsei’s CEO Ririek
Adriansyah was eager to point out that Loon won’t mean a reduction in its own
cell tower infrastructure.
“Loon is focusing on hard-to-reach areas, not
those we can reach using traditional methods. Without Loon these areas would
probably never be covered by us as they are either too difficult or too
costly,” he said.
Google isn’t the only company using
experimental technologies to bring remote parts of the world online. Facebook
has has plans for solar-powered drones capable of flying for three months at a
time without landing, although so far the company only has only unveiled one full-sized aircraft.
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