Project Rune launches commercial service in Kenya

Google’s parent company Alphabet-affiliated Loon is promoting Project Loon, which provides the Internet even in wasteland with hot air balloons blown in the stratosphere. For several years, tests have been conducted, such as operating in disaster areas. And in July 2020, Project Rune’s commercial hot air balloon finally begins in Kena.

Project Rune is a project in which a Wi-Fi antenna powered by solar panels is mounted on a polyethylene hot air balloon and blown into the stratosphere for 20 km to provide Internet to areas where communication infrastructure is not maintained. The tennis court-sized hot air balloon is guided by a machine learning algorithm that can continue to fly for more than 100 days once launched.

Project Rune has been used to assist in the restoration of damaged areas such as Puerto Rico suffering from hurricane damage and Peru suffering from earthquake damage since starting demonstration tests in New Zealand in 2013. Then, in July, it will finally start commercialization in Kenya.

Lun has partnered with Kenyan telecommunications company Telekom Kenya to provide 4G LTE over 35 hot air balloons over a range of 50,000 km ² from western to central Kenya. The range of Internet communication provided by hot air balloons is mainly in mountainous areas where communication infrastructure construction is difficult on the ground and stable Internet service is not provided.

The Internet service provided by Kenya connects 35,000 unique users during the test phase, and can use services such as voice and video calls, web browsing and YouTube viewing. In the test at the end of June, the download speed was 18.9Mbps, the upload speed was 4.74Mbps, and the standby time was 19 milliseconds.

Rune hopes that it will improve the health care system by providing the Internet to areas far from the city, provide high-quality classes remotely to children, and use information such as weather and new agricultural technologies, so that farmers can increase the yield.

The hot air balloon Internet service provided by Rune does not replace the Internet using existing ground stations or satellites, but is establishing itself as a new Internet service layer. It is planning to provide Internet to people in a wider range by utilizing Internet services using terrestrial base stations, satellites, and stratospheric hot air balloons respectively. Related information can be found here .