Google has announced that it has joined major mobile phone companies in Indonesia and will begin testing with balloona to provide internet to more than 100 million citizens. The project is called Loon.
As Indonesia is spread over more than 17.000 islands with difficult terrain, the infrastructure of the internet is poor and about two-thirds of the population has no access to the Web.
According to a Google announcement, the company is working with Indosat, Telkomsel and XL Axiata to test it project Loon from next year. The company hopes to provide 4G LTE connections to Internet over the next few years from balloons that will fly about 20 kilometers above the earth's surface.
It will be interesting to see if it can beat similar efforts that hope to provide satellite internet access.
