(Bal)Loon or Looney?
It’s hard to imagine, but there are still large chunks of mankind that don’t have access to high speed connectivity even in the Western world , not just parts of Africa and Asia. Of the world’s population of 7 billion, only 2.7 billion are wired. Obviously, the company that benefits the most when more and more people get online is Google. No wonder then that it is Google that wants to create systems to allow anyone, anywhere to get connected…after all, smartphones are getting cheaper and cheaper. With cellphones, we bypassed laying cables as the way to provide connectivity. And now Google decided to bypass transmission towers (well, ok, they didn’t eliminate transmission towers altogether) by putting up balloons in the sky! Project Loon as it is called, aims at putting a ring of balloons around the globe that act as your wireless network. Plus, of course, a few ground stations to close the loop. And they also install special antennas in those remote areas that they seek to connec...