Google, via its Alphabet parent company, has been developing its Loon high-altitude balloon-based platforms. The concept was that these very high-flying balloons would be platforms for distributing broadband signals to the ground. Japanese media conglomerate SoftBank says it has bought about 200 IP patents for Google’s High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) from Loon and will […]
Google’s Alphabet parent company has closed down its Project Loon which contemplated launching giant stratosphere balloons to beam and reflect broadband signals. Evidently Google could not get the project’s overall costs low enough to make the concept viable. “While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to […]
A subsidiary company of Google/Alphabet is now beaming the world’s first commercial high-speed internet access from a balloon. The service went live on July 8th over Kenya and in particular allowing users in the country’s Rift Valley to tap into broadband via Telkom Kenya and the Project Loon balloons. “Kenya is the first country […] […]