Loon's Balloons Will Fly Over Kenya in First Commercial Telecom Tryout

Kenya runs on mobile phones. And yet, outside of major cities like Nairobi, the infrastructure for mobile telephony is lacking. That's why, in 2019, telecommunications provider Telkom Kenya will begin turning to high-altitude balloons built by the Alphabet subsidiary Loon to provide mobile phone service. From a report: 'High-altitude balloons are actually a very reasonable way to approach this problem,' says Sal Candido, Loon's head of engineering. 'They're high, they cover a lot of ground, and there are no obstacles.' It's simple 'but for one thing,' Candido adds -- each balloon needs to stay in place in the stratosphere, providing coverage for one area for hundreds of days before being replaced. Candido has been with Loon for five years, long before the effort -- then known as Project Loon -- graduated from X, the Alphabet research and development subsidiary, in July 2018. Candido initially worked on developing the balloons' navigation system, one of the key components needed to address the 'one thing' keeping the idea from really lifting off.

The challenge of how to navigate the balloons properly has changed drastically during Candido's time at Loon, because over the years the understanding of how Loon would operate has changed drastically as well. As Loon launched more balloons for its test flights -- the company has now logged over 30 million kilometers -- the engineering team realized that they could control where the balloons would travel. 'Sometimes the most obvious answer comes to you much later on,' Candido says. 'Why don't the balloons just not leave the coverage area?' It turns out that this is possible, at least in most places, for reasonable durations.

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