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from the successful-rollout-is-still-up-in-the-air dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Alphabet's Loon project said Thursday that its balloons will bring internet to remote parts of Kenya next year.
This'll be the project's first deal in Africa, Reuters reports, and it'll see Loon working with Telkom Kenya to get high-speed internet to the East African country's rural and suburban populations.
Loon became its own company only last week -- having started in 2016 as a project at X, Google parent Alphabet's research-and-development facility. It uses high-flying balloons powered by on-board solar panels as Wi-Fi carriers to deliver signals from above.
The balloons float at 60,000 feet (20 km) above sea level -- high over air traffic, wildlife and weather events.
[...] Last year, Alphabet teamed with AT&T to bring limited internet access to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @12:35AM (2 children)
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an internet connection that will lock you in to Facebook and track you like your ancestors tracked game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @01:18AM (1 child)
"It's an internet connection that will lock you in to Facebook and track you like your ancestors tracked game."
*
Fixed to reflect reality :
It's an internet connection that will lock you in to Facebook and track you like you and your your neighbors track game, except you won't really be interested in a computer when you are living in a grass hut.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Monday July 23 2018, @01:36AM
Why would teh Goog lock anyone into Facebook?
1) they don't get anything for it
2) they get in enough trouble just setting a default search setting
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Funny) by XivLacuna on Monday July 23 2018, @12:41AM
i am kang of kenya and i need you help! the army is tryin to overthrow my kang ass and i need yo bank account details so i can wire you my fortunes! i rather you have it than those army backstabbers! all i ask is to be able to crash on you couch for a while
Thanks Google!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @01:15AM (9 children)
The "geniuses" who are running this project ( yeah, let's give internet to people, many of whom don't even own a phone or a computer ) are going to discover that in
Africa, there are storms which come very close to 60,000 feet and which can make their little blimps bounce around in a manner that might cause the blimps to
fail.
It's always amusing to read about people like Elon Musk or these Alphabet folks. Their arrogance is unbounded, but they WILL learn humility, sooner or later. Life is like that.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday July 23 2018, @01:31AM (1 child)
https://qz.com/900099/kenyas-mobile-phone-ownership-is-lower-than-we-thought/ [qz.com]
Seems like many of them do have phones.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Monday July 23 2018, @01:49AM
Lot of numbers. Lots of numbers. But it's like, you take 8 folks from Kenya. And 1 of them didn't keep his cellphone service payed up. Or never had it! I'll tell you, that's a shithole country. And that's where my predecessor came from! Amazing we survived that one......
(Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Monday July 23 2018, @01:58AM (2 children)
I'd like to know where the money is flowing. The projects are always sold on their humanitarian merits but in the end, the tech companies are there to make a buck.
I guess there's a lot of people in Africa whose private information hasn't yet been leeched and monetized.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday July 23 2018, @02:18AM
China has "more than 3,000, largely critical, infrastructure projects" over there https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/04/16/competing-in-africa-china-the-european-union-and-the-united-states/ [brookings.edu]
https://www.thebusinessyear.com/top-10-china-infrastructure-projects-in-africa-2018/focus [thebusinessyear.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @03:32AM
"I'd like to know where the money is flowing."
-
You need to reset your thinking mode to a more sinister setting.
The blimps will facilitate things which are in the interest of "deep state" actors.
Africa is one of the world's prime repositories of rare earths and other things which are
of strategic importance to those in power in the countries we call "superpowers".
The notion that these blimps will be put up so the average person can access the web is
hilariously naive. Think more along the lines of NSA surveillance and comms and you will
be much closer to the right track.
(Score: 1) by Captival on Monday July 23 2018, @02:13AM (3 children)
Yeah. I'm sure a bunch of highly paid engineers and designers working on a floating object never thought "Hmmm. Maybe we should consider that weather exists."
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday July 23 2018, @02:23AM
Based on "flying car" adventure your irony may be the simple truth.
Perhaps the development goes along these lines:
Balloons. Yes Sir. Flying cars. Sir, yes Sir.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @03:36AM (1 child)
Sort of like how a bunch of highly paid engineers and designers never thought "windows with corners could cause stress concentrations" ?
/
/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet#Accidents_and_incidents [wikipedia.org]
You have WAY too much faith in engineers and designers, son. These people fuck up all the time. It is part of the process.
If you were more educated on the subject, you'd be aware of this.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday July 23 2018, @11:11AM
Yeah but AC, you have way too much faith in random guys on the internet. Sure engineers screw up but without evidence for that, it's not really a great idea to assume incompetence.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday July 23 2018, @01:34AM (3 children)
What are the folks on the ground going to use to send their replies? Not consumer grade wifi equipment, that's for sure. They're orders of magnitude underpowered for that. You can only improve the antennas on the blimp so much - you'll need a lot of power on the ground transmitter too or this just can't work.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @01:55AM (1 child)
Let me follow the links in the article for you.
--
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @02:03AM
CBS News [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday July 23 2018, @02:40AM
I tried to find the answer and could not; in details anyway. It appears that balloon transmitter is powerful enough so regular phones can get LTE data directly from it. On the way back it looks like "cooperation with providers" is the key. I haven't found it written down, but the only way I imagine is that cell providers will deliver packets to Google regular way. Since upload traffic is typically way lower, it may work (similar to satellite offers).
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by evilcam on Tuesday July 24 2018, @04:59AM
Shout-out to the editor:
That's a fantastic pun in the department field on this one.
I can't mod up that line, but if I could, I would.
Bravo!