Loon LLC was an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary working on providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The company used high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere at an altitude of 18 km (11 mi) to 25 km (16 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 1 Mbit/s speeds. Named in reference to the balloons used, Project Loon began as a research and development project by X (formerly Google X) in 2011, but later spun out into a separate company in July 2018. The balloons were maneuvered by adjusting their altitude in the stratosphere to float to a wind layer with the desired speed and direction, using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Users of the service connected to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal traveled through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then into the global Internet. In January 2021, Alphabet announced that the company would be shut down due to lack of profitability.
Timeline
Declined business acquisition In 2008, Google considered contracting with or acquiring Space Data Corp., a company that sends balloons carrying small base stations about 20 mi (32 km) up in the air for providing connectivity to truckers and oil companies in the southern United States, but did not do so.
Internal project and the public announcement Unofficial development on the project began in 2011 under incubation in Google X with a series of trial runs in California's Central Valley. The project was officially announced as a Google project on June 14, 2013.
First launches On June 16, 2013, Google launched about 30 balloons in New Zealand in coordination with the country's Civil Aviation Authority from the Tekapo area in the South Island. About 50 local users in and around Christchurch and the Canterbury region tested connections to the aerial network using special antennas. After this initial trial, Google planned on sending up 300 balloons around the world at the 40th parallel south that would provide coverage to New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Argentina. Google hoped to eventually have thousands of balloons flying in the stratosphere.
Testing and practical implementations The first person to connect and receive Internet access from one of the Loon balloons was Charles Nimmo, a farmer and entrepreneur in Leeston, New Zealand. Nimmo was one of 50 people in the area around Christchurch who agreed to be a pilot tester for Loon. The New Zealand farmer lived in a rural location that was unable to get broadband access to the Internet. The town's residents used a satellite Internet service in 2009, but found that the service could incur costs of up to $1000 per month. Locals participating in the testing were not made aware of the details, other than that it had potential ability to deliver Internet connectivity, but allowed project workers to attach a basketball-sized receiver resembling a giant bright-red party balloon to an outside wall of their property in order to connect to the network. The technology designed in the project could allow countries to avoid using expensive fiber cable that would have to be installed underground to allow users to connect to the Internet. Alphabet felt this would greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can not afford to lay underground fiber cable.
New partners and further implementations In May 2014, Google X laboratories director Eric "Astro" Teller announced that, rather than negotiate a section of bandwidth that was free for them worldwide, they would instead become a temporary base station that could be leased by the mobile operators of the country it was crossing over. This was based on work done by the Access Field Development Director, Kai Wulff, who was involved in fiber and broadband roll-outs in Emerging Markets from the early 2000s. In May and June of 2014, Google tested its balloon-powered Internet access venture in Piauí, Brazil, marking its first LTE experiments and launch near the equator. In 2014, Google partnered with France's Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) on the project. On July 28, 2015, Google signed an agreement with officials of Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) – Sri Lanka, to launch the technology on a mass scale. As a result, by March 2016, Sri Lanka would be the second country in the world to get full coverage of Internet using LTE, after Vatican City.
Laser links tested In February 2016, Google announced it had achieved a stable laser communication connection between two balloons over a distance of 62 miles (100 km). The connection was stable over many hours during both day and nighttime, reaching a data rate of 155 Mbit/s. On February 25, 2016, Google started testing their autolauncher, named "Chicken Little", at former naval station Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.
Patent disagreement In May 2017, Space Data started proceedings for patent infringement. Google settled the case in July 2019.
Support for Puerto Rico On October 6, 2017, Google filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and cleared it the same day, with authorization to start immediately to provide emergency LTE coverage to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The plan allowed 30 balloons to relay communication between ground terminals connected to people's handsets. Google would have to install over-the-air (OTA) updates to allow Band 8 (900 MHz) operations and at the end of the authorization, a separate OTA update would disable this operation. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced at a press conference on October 8, 2017, the launch of Google's Loon Project on the Caribbean island, following its approval by the FCC. On October 9, 2017, multiple balloons were spotted near Puerto Rico via Flightradar24. That same month, it was reported that the project had spun off into its own company, Loon Inc; however, it was clarified that it still remained as a project at X, until July 2018. On November 9, 2017, it was reported that Google had launched several balloons from Nevada and positioned them over Puerto Rico as part of an effort to bring 100,000 people online.
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