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Alphabet to Deploy Loon Internet Balloons in Kenya's Skies in 2019

posted by martyb on Monday July 23 2018, @12:21AM   
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

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Original Submission

• Re:60,000 feet is NOT above all weather. Re:60,000 feet is NOT above all weather. (Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday July 23 2018, @01:31AM (1 child)

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday July 23 2018, @01:31AM (#710995) Journal

  yeah, let's give internet to people, many of whom don't even own a phone or a computer

  https://qz.com/900099/kenyas-mobile-phone-ownership-is-lower-than-we-thought/ [qz.com]

  According to its report for July through September last year [2016], Kenya’s mobile subscriptions were 38.5 million, a 3% decline from the 39.7 million reported in the previous quarter.

  That brings mobile penetration in Kenya’s 44 million large population down to 87%, from 90% the quarter before. (The rate may be lower, since these figures don’t take into account the fact that Kenyans often have more than one phone line from different service providers.)

  Seems like many of them do have phones.

  --
  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

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  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:60,000 feet is NOT above all weather. (Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Monday July 23 2018, @01:49AM

  by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday July 23 2018, @01:49AM (#711004) Homepage Journal

  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......

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