Using high-tech balloons, Google will bring Internet to millions of rural Indonesians

Less than 1 in 3 Indonesians have access to the internet, and those that do, by and large, live in the country’s larger cities. Due to Indonesia’s unique geography, many communities are cut off from the online world because building out internet infrastructure to their remote areas would be too expensive for the government or large telcos to invest in.

So what’s the most cost effective way to get internet access to Indonesians in rural areas (not to mention the two-thirds of the world population who face similar connectivity issues)?

Balloons, of course.

That is the answer dreamed up by the geniuses working for Google X, the internet search giant’s secret laboratory where workers brainstorm ideas to change the world.

Dubbed “Project Loon,” it is probably exactly what you imagine it to be – a network of balloons, equipped with an array of wireless communication tech, that can be set up in areas with little to no infrastructure and beam the internet to people across large swaths of remote land. 

Yes, they’re obviously aware of how “loony” that idea sounds, but Google has already been working on its practical application for quite a while. The Google X team has been working on Project since 2011, and, after doing smaller scale testing in New Zealand and Brazil, they are ready to bring it to Indonesia in a big way.

“Indonesia is the perfect fit for Project Loon,” said Mike Cassidy, the project leader for Loon, at a press conference at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California yesterday, in front of a Loon balloon and representatives from Indonesian telcos and government officials (President Joko Widodo was supposed to attend as well, before he cut his trip to the US short to attend to the haze crisis).

Google has partnered with three Indonesian internet service providers, Telkomsel, Axiata and Inmost, to bring Project Loon to our country. The telcos will handle the customer relations and billing side of the equation while Google handles the hundreds of Loon balloons that it will take to cover Indonesia. 

Together, they will spend 12 months testing and rolling out coverage in Indonesia before trying to turn it into a commercial venture. 

To read more about the technology behind it, check out Google’s Project Loon website.