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'Look, Up in the Sky; It's - Google?'

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'Look, Up in the Sky; It's - Google?'

 
November 21, 2014

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  By Rory J. Thompson, Web Editor
 


Telecom providers are faced with a myriad challenges these days, not the least of which is the Net Neutrality issue raising its head in Washington and elsewhere. But a related issue keeping executives up at night is how to reach rural areas with their service, without breaking the bank to do so? It seems Google (News - Alert), of all companies, might have a solution.


According to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, the search giant’s new effort, Project Loon, will attempt to test 20 so-called “Loon Balloons” over Australia, which will carry equipment that beams down Internet coverage.

“Loon aims to operate a ring of balloons circling the Earth at roughly 65,000 feet [about 12 miles up] that receive and transmit via LTE (News - Alert), a popular mobile communication standard, to extend existing wireless networks to less-populated areas that previously were considered too expensive to cover,” the Journal said.

While some telecom analysts see Project Loon as a threat to incumbent carriers, Google says it really wants to partner rather than compete. To help the effort along, some large wireless players have stepped forward. So far, Google is running similar tests with Britain’s Vodafone in New Zealand and Spain’s Telefonica (News - Alert) in South America.

Obviously, the plan is encountering some technical (and regulatory) challenges, but Google says the business model “is emerging.” The company maintains that telecom companies get to keep their relationships with subscribers, while Loon helps reduce the cost to reach into rural areas and supply missing coverage.

“We partner with telcos in every country we roll out in,” Mike Cassidy, VP of Project Loon, said during a recent talk in New York at The Next Billion conference. “The telcos are trying to reach their rural population that they can’t reach today. The telco does the billing for the customer, they own the customer, they do the customer support; they market the service to the customer.”

All that’s left for Google to do is get those balloons up in the sky, and then keep them there. What could possibly go wrong?

 
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