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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) – A Google Affiliate The company has selected Kenya as the country of its first commercial agreement announced to provide Internet access to sectors. difficult to reach using high altitude balloons.
Loon, who is linked to Google by parent company Alphabet Inc., says he's working with Telkom Kenya to provide 4G / LTE cellular access to Kenya in 2019.
The balloons will be tested in the Central Kenya, which has been difficult to serve due to mountainous or inaccessible terrain. The high altitude balloons have already been deployed in emergency situations in Peru and Puerto Rico, where they have helped areas devastated by floods and hurricanes.
Billions of people on Earth are still not connected to the Internet. They tend to live in the poorest places with the least infrastructure to support it.
Since Google launched the project in 2013, its goal was to connect everyone on the planet. While more people connect with Google's ambitions to make information "universally accessible and useful," it also increases the number of people who can use Google's advertising services.
The announcement comes just a week after Loon graduated from Alphabet. "Moonshot Factory" known as X. This means that it is considered a full-fledged company alongside sister companies, including Google and Waymo, developer of autonomous cars. "We are excited to take a big step forward for our company and our mission," Loon's CEO, Alastair Westgarth, said in an article
Westgarth says the Alphabet marks a milestone important in a trip started in 2013 when a New Zealand breeder became one of the first to connect with balloons testers. Facebook has also tried to provide Internet via solar drones. Last year, he conducted a test flight over Arizona, following a previous flight that resulted in an accident. But last month, Facebook announced that it would stop making its own aircraft and that it would support other high-altitude connectivity initiatives.
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