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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Four years ago, three big tech companies had plans in the works to beam internet down to Earth from the sky, and each scenario sounded wilder than the next. SpaceX requested permission to launch 4,425 satellites into orbit to create a global internet hotspot. Facebook wanted to use solar-powered drones and laser-based tech to shoot wifi to antennas. And Google's Loon was building giant balloons to house solar-powered electronics that would transmit connectivity down from the stratosphere.

[...] Loon balloons made their (non-emergency) debut in Kenya this week, with 35 balloons transmitting a 4G signal to 31,000 square miles of central and western Kenya.

[...] Specially-developed software uses predictive modeling of stratospheric winds and decision-making algorithms to shift the balloons as needed for a more reliable connection down below (balloons need to be within 40 kilometers of users for the service to work). The software constantly learns to improve the balloons' choreography and thus the network's quality, and the system can function autonomously.

The electronics inside the balloons get a wifi signal from a local telecoms partner at a ground station. In Kenya, Loon partnered with Telkom Kenya, the country's third-largest carrier. The signal gets relayed across multiple nearby balloons that transmit it back down to peoples' phones and other devices. Each balloon can cover an area of 5,000 square kilometers (a little under 2,000 square miles, or about the size of the state of Delaware).

A field testing session in Kenya in late June registered an upload speed of 4.74 Mpbs, a download speed of 18.9Mbps, and latency of 19 milliseconds. For comparison's sake, the average speed in the US is 52 Mpbs upload and 135 Mbps download; so service will be a bit slower in Kenya. One other small problem: since the electronics in the balloons are solar-powered, they only send down a signal during daylight hours; service is currently available from 6am to 9pm.

-- submitted from IRC

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