Hot air balloon rides in Bristol, Brisbane and Bali have never been more popular, but providing an exciting mode of transport is far from the only thing that large balloons in the sky can do – just ask Google.
The company’s Project Loon uses a network of hot air balloons, which are as wide as half of an American football field and which can fly higher than an aeroplane, will soon be providing reliable internet access to the people of Indonesia.
The access will be provided to residents of Indonesia as part of the efforts, with Google are set to launch in various locations across the nation.
Google first tried using hot air balloons to provide internet access in New Zealand back in 2013. It works by using solar powered balloons to create a wireless network that does not require any additional infrastructure.
Speaking about their plans to launch Project Loon in Indonesia, a spokesman for Google’s partners in the project Telkomsel said:
“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.”
Currently, only 29 percent of the people in Indonesia have internet access, largely due to the difficult mountainous terrain of the nation, which makes laying down infrastructure problematic. Project Loon’s balloons, will of course, be able to bypass this problem, bringing internet access to a much larger percentage of the population.
