Connectivity Technology Blog

We have written a lot about Loon on this blog. The project started with a lot of scepticism within the mobile industry but over the years they kept on persisting and solving challenges, one after another. Just when everyone thought that the technology is mature enough and operators starting to give commitment, the parent company has announced the end of Loon! The internet balloon that came down in Morelos, Mexico An official blog post by Alastair Westgarth, CEO of Loon, explains : We talk a lot about connecting the next billion users, but the reality is Loon has been chasing the hardest problem of all in connectivity — the last billion users: The communities in areas too difficult or remote to reach, or the areas where delivering service with existing technologies is just too expensive for everyday people. While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business. Developing radical new t...

Last year, I wrote about how HAPSMobile is bringing connectivity from the sky for underserved, unserved areas as well as emergencies.  Earlier this year we saw HAPSMobile and Loon Partner for Stratosphere-Based LTE Communications Solution. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that HAPSMobile and Loon have announced "First in the World to Deliver LTE Connectivity from a Fixed-Wing Autonomous Aircraft in the Stratosphere" Selected extract of the  press release as follows:  SoftBank Corp.’s HAPSMobile Inc. (“HAPSMobile”) and Alphabet’s Loon LLC (“Loon”) today announced they successfully tested their jointly developed communications payload in the stratosphere on HAPSMobile’s “Sunglider,” a solar-powered unmanned aircraft system (UAS). Taking place during Sunglider’s first stratospheric test flight at Spaceport America (SpA) in New Mexico on September 21 MT, the test marked the world’s first successful delivery of LTE connectivity from a fixed-wing High Altitude Pl...

You have read a lot about Loon on this blog and our sister blogs. The good news is that Loon is finally providing connectivity to Kenya. It's been nearly 3 years since they were first providing connectivity to flood affected Peru . In our last post on this topic on the blog, we looked at how Loon and Terrestrial LTE can co-exist , which is what is required for providing connectivity via Loon over rural areas. A blog post by Loon CEO provided more details. Here are some extracts: Balloons went from lasting hours to days to weeks to months to over half a year. Launching, once done by hand, is now done by twin, 90-foot tall automated machines that can send a balloon to 60,000 feet once every 30 minutes. Balloons that once floated freely around the world are now directed by machine-learning algorithms that have developed their own interesting and complex navigational maneuvers to achieve the mission of providing sustained service to users below. Communications equipment that c...

In our last post we looked at how Telstra and Ericsson have increased the distance of LTE cell from 100 km to 200 km. If you compare that to Google Loon or other HAPS that fly at 20 km above earth (details here ), it should be an easy task. This is what Signals Research Group investigated as part of their report which is available here officially or on LinkedIn here , unofficially (or officially as well). Fierce Wireless has a good summary of this report here and extract reproduced below: Based on a study of Loon’s network in Peru, Signals Research Group (SRG) found that Loon has a “modest” detrimental impact on the existing terrestrial LTE network while improving coverage in areas where terrestrial LTE coverage doesn’t exist. It’s pretty much the same impact one would get from any cell site being introduced in the same area. Any time a new cell site gets deployed in an LTE network, it will generate at least some interference with adjacent cells, and Loon, whose balloons f...

Original images on HAPSMobile Website . Earlier this month, Alphabet’s Loon LLC (“Loon”) and SoftBank Corp.’s HAPSMobile Inc. (“HAPSMobile”) announced they successfully developed a communications payload for HAPSMobile’s HAWK30, a solar-powered unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that flies in the stratosphere. The press release states: The initiative to design and develop the communications payload for the HAWK30 follows an announcement last April between Loon and HAPSMobile where the companies formed a strategic relationship. The partnership grew out of a joint recognition of the untapped potential of the stratosphere to enhance the connectivity ecosystem and bring more people, places, and things online. Since the April 2019 announcement, technical teams from Loon and HAPSMobile worked together to adapt the payload technology already used on Loon’s stratospheric balloons for the HAWK30. The effort leveraged Loon’s expertise in building communications payloads that are capable o...

(click on image for larger version) I have written couple of posts on 'Internet Para Todos' a.k.a. 'Internet For All' on The 3G4G Blog and 3G4G Small Cells Blog . It was good to hear an update on the programme at TIP Summit 2019 in Amsterdam.  I have embedded the video of the presentation below but here is a quick summary from Justin Springham in Mobile World Live from TIPSummit19: Internet para Todos (IpT), a wholesale operator owned by Telefonica, Facebook, and Latin American banks IDB Invest and CAF Bank, opened talks to bring a second operator on board, after connecting more than 650 sites and covering 800,000 people (450,000 actual customers) with a 4G rollout in rural Peru. The initiative, only up and running since May 2019, is regarded as something of a poster child for OpenRAN technology, with vendor Parallel Wireless supplying compatible kit for more than half of those mobile sites (reports suggest Huawei is the other vendor, supplying more tradi...