Project Loon to launch balloon-powered internet in Indonesia

Alphabet has announced that it will be partnering with Indonesia's top three mobile network providers to test and then roll out its Project Loon balloon-powered internet service across the country.

In a Google Blog post, the Project Loon Vice President Mike Cassidy described the
Loon balloons as "floating cell phone towers in the sky. Flying on the winds at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, each one beams a connection down to the ground; as one balloon drifts out of range, another moves in to take its place"
Alphabet's Project Loon team will be working with Indosat, Telkomsel and XL Axiata, who will begin tests in 2016. Mike Cassidy writes that "over the next few years, we’re hoping that Loon will help put high-speed LTE Internet connections within reach of more than 100 million Indonesians".

Indonesia represents exactly the kind of geographical challenge that Project Loon is designed to meet. Its 17,000 island archipelago stretches across 1.9 million square kilometres and is home to 250 million people, only one in three of whom currently have internet access. With the islands' terrain including dense jungle and high mountains, even mobile phone towers are difficult to install, let alone fibreoptic cable for traditional high-speed broadband.

Project Loon's balloons travel about 20km above the surface of the Earth, and can be maneuvered by taking advantage of the stratified layers of winds at those high altitudes. According to the Loon team, "each layer of wind varies in speed and direction. By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network".