Starting next year, the top three mobile network operators in Indonesia--Indosat, Telkomsel, and XL Axiata--will test Project Loon-- balloons to deliver Long Term Evolution 4G signals across the country.
Sri Lanka might be going further, and reportedly is planning on relying on Project Loon to cover the island for Internet access, starting as early as March 2016. There would seem to be some significant issues to be settled, if that timetable is to be kept.
Unless something new has been developed, Project Loon would beam signals to stationary antennas, much as a fixed wireless network would do. There would be no way to deliver signals directly to a mobile phone using LTE, for example.
So though mobile operators would be logical partners, they are not the only logical partners. Fixed network telcos might arguably be better positioned to serve as on-the-ground sales, installation and support partners.
There also has been confusion about whether the service was to be supplied “for free, or for fee.” Both could be correct conclusions, though it seems likely any “free” services would be limited, both in terms of usage or speed. Think of a program similar to Wi-Fi at public institutions.
It is possible, perhaps likely, that some amount of basic service could be made available “for free.” But it seems highly unlikely that most of the service can be provided that way. Nor would most offers of that sort provide unlimited access or large buckets of usage.
But it seems most likely that most of the service will be supplied at some commercial rate.
Most likely, Google would function as a backhaul provider, on a wholesale basis, with retail ISPs providing the end user service, and Google being paid a percentage of revenue.
The paucity of follow-up details since the July 2016 announcement likely mean actual commercial agreements with mobile operators were not finalized at the time. .
It is believed Project Loon consumers will be able to buy service with downloads speeds of up to 10 Mbps.
The current plan for Project Loon states that 13 balloons will be used to cover Sri Lanka.
Preferably, the Project Loon balloons would use 700-MHz frequencies for the downlinks.. At this frequency, each balloon can cover a 5000 square kilometers. If they try using a higher frequency such as 2500 MHz (2.5 GHz), then the coverage area drops significantly.
That might require moving TV broadcasters to new frequencies, however. So that seems unlikely.
More reasonable is use of the 2.5 GHz spectrum.
The balloons will provide LTE Internet connectivity to an area on the ground around 40 km (25 miles) in diameter.
Sri Lanka said at the time of its announcement that it would be the first country to support deployment of Google Project Loon-based Internet access.
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