Loon LLC

In 2008, Google considered contracting with or acquiring Space Data Corp,[13] a company that sends balloons carrying small base stations about 20 mi (32 km) up in the air for providing connectivity to truckers and oil companies in the southern United States, but didn't do so.[14]

Unofficial development on the project began in 2011 under incubation in Google X with a series of trial runs in California's Central Valley. The project was officially announced as a Google project on June 14, 2013.[1]

On June 16, 2013, Google launched about 30 balloons in New Zealand in coordination with the Civil Aviation Authority from the Tekapo area in the South Island. About 50 local users in and around Christchurch and the Canterbury region tested connections to the aerial network using special antennas.[1] After this initial trial, Google plans on sending up 300 balloons around the world at the 40th parallel south that would provide coverage to New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Argentina. Google hopes to eventually have thousands of balloons flying in the stratosphere.[1][2]

In May 2014, Google X laboratories director Astro Teller announced that, rather than negotiate a section of bandwidth that was free for them worldwide, they would instead become a temporary base station that could be leased by the mobile operators of the country it was crossing over. This was based on work done by the Access Field Development Director, Kai Wulff, who was involved in fiber and broadband roll-outs in Emerging Markets from the early 2000s.

In May–June 2014 Google tested its balloon-powered internet access venture in Piauí, Brazil, marking its first LTE experiments and launch near the equator.[15]

In 2014, Google partnered with France's Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) on the project.[16]

On July 28, 2015, Google signed an agreement with officials of Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) – Sri Lanka, to launch the technology on a mass scale.[17] As a result, by March 2016,[17] Sri Lanka will be the second country in the world to get full coverage of internet using LTE, after Vatican City.

In February 2016, Google announced to have achieved a stable laser communication connection between two balloons over a distance of 62 miles (100 km). The connection was stable over many hours and during day and nighttime and reached a data rate of 155 Mbit/s.[18]

On February 25, 2016, Google started testing their autolauncher named "Chicken Little" at former naval station Roosevelt Roads located in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.[19]

In May 2017, Space Data started proceedings for patent infringement that is due in court in 2019.[13] Google settled the case in July 2019.[20]

On October 6, 2017, Google filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and cleared it the same day, with authorization to start immediately to provide emergency LTE coverage to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The plan allows 30 balloons to relay communication between ground terminals connected to people's handsets. Google will have to install Over The Air (OTA) updates to allow Band 8 operations and at the end of the authorization, a separate OTA update will disable this operation. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced at a press conference on October 8, 2017 the launch of Google's Loon Project on the Caribbean island, following its approval by the FCC.

On October 9, 2017, multiple balloons were spotted near Puerto Rico via Flightradar24.[21] That same month, it was reported that the project had spun off into its own company Loon Inc; however, it was clarified that it still remained as a project at X, until July 2018.[22] On November 9, 2017, it was reported that Google had launched several balloons from Nevada and positioned them over Puerto Rico as part of an effort to bring 100,000 people online.[23]

On July 11, 2018, X, Google's R&D facility, announced that Loon was "graduating", becoming an Alphabet subsidiary in its own right rather than a project of X.[24] As part of its first commercial agreement with Telkom Kenya, Loon has pledged to bring internet access to some of Kenya's most inaccessible regions,[25] to be live in 2019.[26]

On April 26, 2019, they formed a partnership and received funding from Softbank.[27]

On July 23, 2019, Loon announced they had reached one million hours of stratospheric flight between their balloon fleet. In an article written by Loon's CTO Sal Candido via Medium, he explained some of the navigational techniques the autonomous balloons deployed such as tacking, loitering and figure-8's to deliver internet service in the most efficient way possible.[28]

On October 28, 2020, Loon claimed a record-duration flight of 312 days for a balloon (HBAL703) which launched from Puerto Rico in May 2019 and landed in Baja, Mexico in March 2020.[29]

On January 21, 2021, it was announced that Loon would be shut down.[7] In his announcement, Teller said "Sadly, despite the team’s groundbreaking technical achievements over the last 9 years […] the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped."[30] WIRED points out the fact, as one of the reason of the shutdown, that the availability of the internet increased from 75% to 93% in the last 10 years in the area without stable connection.[31] Its pilot service in Kenya would be shut down in March 2021 but the company said it would pledge $10 million to support nonprofits and businesses in Kenya dedicated to "connectivity, Internet, entrepreneurship and education."[7]

Loon deploys its high-altitude balloon network into the stratosphere, between altitudes of 18 km and 25 km. The company states that the particular altitude and layer of the stratosphere is advantageous for the balloons because of its low wind speeds, which are usually recorded between 5 mph and 20 mph (10 km/h to 30 km/h). The layer is also an area of minimal turbulence. The company says it is able to model the seasonal, longitudinal and latitudinal wind speed variations, allowing them to adjust the placements of their balloons.[32]

Loon claims it can control the latitudinal and longitudinal position of its high-altitude balloons by changing their altitude. They do this by adjusting the volume and density of internal gas (which is composed of either helium, hydrogen or another lighter-than-air substance), which allows the balloon's variable buoyancy system to control the altitude. Additionally, Google has indicated that the balloons are possibly constructed from materials like metalized Mylar, BoPET, or a highly flexible latex or rubber material, like chloroprene.[32]

Initially, the balloons communicated using unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 GHz ISM bands,[33] and Google claims that the setup allows it to deliver "speeds comparable to 3G" to users, but they then switched to LTE[34] with cellular spectrum by cooperating with local telecommunication operators.[35] It is unclear how technologies that rely on short communications times (low latency pings), such as VoIP, might need to be modified to work in an environment similar to mobile phones where the signal may have to relay through multiple balloons before reaching the wider Internet.[36][37] Google also experimented with laser communication technology to interconnect balloons at high altitude and achieved a data rate of 155 Mbit/s over a distance of 62 miles (100 km).[18]

The first person to connect and receive internet access from one of the Loon balloons was Charles Nimmo, a farmer and entrepreneur in Leeston, New Zealand. Nimmo was one of 50 people in the area around Christchurch who agreed to be a pilot tester for Loon. The New Zealand farmer lived in a rural location that was unable to get broadband access to the Internet. The town's residents used a satellite Internet service in 2009, but found that the service could reach costs of up to $1000 per month.[3]

Locals participating in the testing were not made aware of the details, other than that it had potential ability to deliver Internet connectivity, but allowed project workers to attach a basketball-sized receiver resembling a giant bright-red party balloon to an outside wall of their property in order to connect to the network.[3]

The technology designed in the project could allow countries to avoid using expensive fiber cable that would have to be installed underground to allow users to connect to the Internet. Alphabet felt this would greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can't afford to lay underground fiber cable.[38] Despite the shutdown of the Project Loon, some of Loon’s technology like Project Taara which started its pan-African rollout in Kenya will continue to provide high-speed internet to unconnected and under-connected communities in Kenya.[39][40][41]

The balloon envelopes used in the project are designed and made by Raven Aerostar,[42] and are based on the Raven Aerostar Super Pressure Balloon.[43] The balloons are composed of polyethylene plastic about 0.076 mm (0.0030 in) thick. The balloons are superpressure balloons filled with helium, standing 15 m (49 ft) across and 12 m (39 ft) tall when fully inflated. They carry a custom air pump system dubbed the "Croce"[44] that pumps in or releases air to ballast the balloon and control its altitude.[1] A small box weighing 10 kg (22 lb) containing each balloon's electronic equipment hangs underneath the inflated envelope. This box contains circuit boards that control the system, radio antennas and a Ubiquiti Networks 'Rocket M2'[45] to communicate with other balloons and with Internet antennas on the ground, and batteries to store solar power so the balloons can operate during the night. Each balloon's electronics are powered by an array of solar panels that sit between the envelope and the hardware. In full sun, the panels produce 100 watts of power, which is sufficient to keep the unit running while also charging a battery for use at night. A parachute, called Raven Aerostar Payload Recovery Parachute,[43] is attached to the top of the envelope allows for a controlled descent, landing and payload recovery when a balloon is ready to be taken out of service.[33] In the case of an unexpected failure, the parachute deploys automatically.[46] When taken out of service, the balloon is guided to an easily reached location, and the helium is vented into the atmosphere. The balloons typically have a maximum life of about 100 days, although Google claims that its tweaked design can enable them to stay aloft for closer to 200 days.[47]

The prototype ground stations used a Ubiquiti Networks 'Rocket M5'[45] radio and a custom patch antenna[48] to connect to the balloons at a height of 20 km (12 mi).[11] Some reports have called Google's project the Google Balloon Internet.[2][49][50]

The balloons are equipped with automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast and so can be publicly tracked (along with other balloons) with the call-sign "HBAL"[51]

Loon has generally been well received, although Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project developers and astronomers have raised concerns that the lower of the two ISM bands that Loon uses (2.4 GHz) will interfere with the mid-band frequency range (0.5 GHz–3 GHz) used in the SKA project.[64]

• List of countries by number of Internet users
• Mobile broadband modem
• Google Fiber
• High-altitude balloon
• Atmospheric satellite
• Alliance for Affordable Internet
• Internet.org
• Geostationary balloon satellite
• Outernet
• O3b Networks
• Google Free Zone
• Stratovision
• Starlink (satellite constellation)
• Raven Industries

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Project Loon.

• Official website
• Loon LLC's channel on YouTube
• Wired: The Untold Story of Google's Quest to Bring the Internet Everywhere—By Balloon
• Sri Lanka inks deal for Google Loon broadband floating 'telecom towers