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takyon writes:

Google is teaming up with Sri Lanka to provide 3G mobile Internet to the entire nation using Google's Project Loon high-altitude balloons:

"The entire Sri Lankan island – every village from (southern) Dondra to (northern) Point Pedro – will be covered with affordable high speed Internet using Google Loon's balloon technology," said Samaraweera, who is also IT minister. Officials said local Internet service providers will have access to the balloons, reducing their operational costs.

Muhunthan Canagey, head of local authority the Information and Communication Technology Agency, said he expected Google to have finished sending up the balloons by next March. "Service providers will be able to access higher speeds and improve the quality of their existing service once the balloon project is up and running," Canagey told AFP. "We can also expect prices to come down," he said after he signed the agreement with Michael Cassidy, a Google vice president.

[...] Google plans to keep the balloons aloft in the stratosphere for 100 days, transmitting Internet signals to the ground, and with their movements guided by an algorithmic formula. Tests were carried out in New Zealand in 2013.

Official figures show there are 2.8 million mobile Internet connections and 606,000 fixed line Internet subscribers among Sri Lanka's more than 20 million population. Sri Lanka became the first country in South Asia to introduce mobile phones in 1989 and the first to roll out a 3G network in 2004. It was also the first in the region to unveil a 4G network two years ago.

Although the balloons are designed to provide 3G speeds to people on the ground, they will communicate with cell networks using higher speed transmitters. From EconomyNext:

Deputy Investment Promotions Minister Eran Wickremeratne told EconomyNext that each ballon could cover about 5,000 square kilometres and with a little over a dozen the entire country could be covered. "They have a finite lifetime and you have to keep sending them up," he said. "So coverage is one side, access also means the cost, which has to be affordable." The Google Loon balloons have LTE standard transceivers which can connect to cell phone networks filling gaps in their networks. "Service providers will enter in to agreements with "floating cell towers" that will be shared bringing down transmission costs leading to further reductions in cost of service provision," de Silva said.

[...] Cell phone signals generally propagate on a line of sight basis and there can be gaps in mountainous areas where it is physically not possible or in other sparsely populated or wilderness areas where it does not make economic sense to cover. Google Loon balloons are expected to navigate in the stratosphere and fill gaps in coverage.

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