Project Loon Gets A Green Light

Alphabet, now in charge of Google's Project Loon, has been given a green light by the FCC to deploy 30 balloons over Puerto Rico to provide the recovering nation with much needed LTE access.

Hurricane Maria's affects have left millions of Puerto Rican citizens without cellular service, water and electricity. The balloons, which float 11 miles above target areas, send signal to each other from a base station to create an aerial wireless network that provides LTE to unconnected areas. The project name Loon was a reflection of how crazy the idea was when Google first imagined the solution, but there's nothing crazy about the idea now as the aerial system, when active, will provide coverage to Puerto Rico and nearby US Virgin Islands.  

The FCC has given Alphabet permission to operate it's Loon network of balloons through April of 2018. 


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