HIGH-SPEED INTERNET FOR KENYA’S RIFT VALLEY

ALPHABET has begun offering the world’s first commercial high-speed internet using balloons to villagers in remote regions of Kenya’s Rift Valley yesterday. The service is run by Loon, a unit of Google’s parent Alphabet, and Telkom Kenya, the East African nation’s third-largest telecoms operator. “Kenya is the first country… to have base stations high up in the sky. Now we will be able to cover the whole country in a very short span of time,” said Information Minister Joe Mucheru, after launching the service. The project aims to provide affordable fourth generation (4G) internet to under-covered or uncovered rural communities. It has been more than a decade in the making. “We are effectively building the next layer of the mobile network around the world. We look like a cell tower 20km in the sky,” said Alastair Westgarth, Loon’s chief executive. The floating base stations have a much wider coverage, about a hundred times the area of a traditional cell phone tower, Westgarth said. The large, translucent balloons are fitted with a solar panel and battery, and float in the upper atmosphere. | Reuters