Alphabet Puts Project Loon Balloon Tech In ‘Boxes’ To Bring Light Beam Internet To India

Alphabet Puts Project Loon Balloon Tech In ‘Boxes’ To Bring Light Beam Internet To India

One of Alphabet’s crazier attempts to bring the internet to more rural and isolated areas was Project Loon. Using what is called Free Space Optical Communication (FSOC), Alphabet proved it’s possible to reliably send data wirelessly between balloons floating hundreds of metres in the sky. Emboldened by the results, Alphabet’s Team X then looked for other areas where it could apply the tech behind Project Loon. So now, the team’s next move will be to put FSOC equipment in boxes that will be mounted all over the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Image: Alphabet

You can think of FSOC as functioning similarly to fiberoptic cable, using beams of light to carry information over huge distances in the blink of an eye. The big difference with FSOC though, is that there is no actual cable, which means there’s no need to dig tunnels or stretch wires across rivers or mountains. Instead, the Google parent company says small FSOC boxes will be installed on elevated structures such as poles or roofs and rely on direct line-of-sight in order to transmit data up to 19km in a single hop.

In India, Alphabet is partnering with telecom company AP State FiberNet to install around 2000 FSOC boxes across the region. FiberNet’s goal is to help bring broadband connectivity to 12 million households by 2019, and these boxes could give FiberNet a cost-effective alternative to traditional mobile towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, while also expanding existing broadband coverage to areas where traditional tech can’t reach.

If all this sounds a bit nuts, that’s because it is. And we’re still not sure what’s stopping a nearby bird from perching in the wrong place and making everyone’s internet lag. But bringing broadband to more people is a good thing. I just wish officials in the US had thought about that before this week’s net neutrality hearing.

[Reuters]


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