Besides looking out for fireworks in the skies on the first of January in 2016, watch out for Google's Internet balloons, too.
Google's Project Loon is the Mountain View company's initiative to make the Internet available to everyone on the planet using balloons. It may sound a bit looney but Google's Project Loon makes just as much sense as Facebook's plans of using huge, solar powered drones.
Using high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere 11 miles high up in the sky, Google hopes to be able to create a multi-balloon, aerial wireless network with up to 4G LTE speeds. Intended to provide Internet access to the remaining five billion people on the planet, Project Loon has already taken test flights in New Zealand and Brazil. Now, the balloons are coming back home.
Documents from the Federal Communcaitions Commission reveal that Google is planning to do large scale tests of its Internet balloons across the country. In its request to the FCC, the company is seeking a license to test experimental radios that make use of the wireless spectrum in the millimeter bandwidth.
Much of information in the public document released by the FCC has been redacted to keep Google's commercial interests confidential. What we do know, however, is that Google wants to test its balloons over American skies for two years beginning on Jan. 1, 2016. In addition, "during the course of testing, Google plans to operate transmitters with a range of bandwidths between 60 and 580 MHz. In no case will the bandwidth be smaller than 60 MHz or exceed 580 MHz," Google notes in its request.
Besides the United States, Google has already sealed an agreement with Indonesia's largest telecom companies to roll out tests in the island nation. That being said, and given that Project Loon's original goal was to serve underdeveloped regions of the world, it's a curiosity as to why Google would want to test Loon in the United States. It could be that testing at home makes perfecting the Loon technology easier, or the company also sees potential commercial value in using Loon balloons for Americans. We'll have to keep our eyes up at the sky to find out.
