Google’s Balloon Project Moving Just Fine

 

Google’s  Project Loon — an ambitious experiment designed to provide rural areas balloon-powered Internet access. One year later, the company may have proven its point: this could work. Since the project was announced last June, the company has made huge strides in balloon flight time and connectivity. Google’s latest floating hotspots have been given LTE capabilities, freeing them from the range limitations the original WiFi-based designed burdened them with. These new radios offer better transfer speeds, too — as high as 22 MB/s to an antenna or 5 MB/s to a phone. More importantly, the balloons are staying aloft for much longer: earlier this year, one test circled the globe three times before dropping to the ground, and another has been floating for over 100 days . By next year, Google hopes to run multiple flights that last for more than 100 days, eventually launching a ring of 300 to 400 balloons that can circle the clone and provide continued service to specific areas.