Google Project Loon to solve Indian rural internet issues

Indian government, in collaboration with Google, is doing a trial run to provide internet connectivity to disadvantaged villages under 'Project Loon'. The project is expected to deliver internet connectivity to places in India which don't have on ground cyberspace connectivity.

Google's Project Loon, as per the Google blog on this technology, creates a loop of Super pressure air balloons in the stratosphere with the help of air direction and software algorithm. Beneath each lighter than air layer, balloons are hung.

These balloons travel to places where they are needed by descending or rising into the layer of wind traveling in the wanted direction. Two radio transceivers receive and send data streams.

The Loon project can help India by partnering with telecommunication companies and share cellular spectrum where people will be able to connect to the balloons directly from their computers and phones. The signal would then be passed across the balloon network, and yet again to Earth for global network use.

This technology is expected to be a cheaper solution than installing fibre optic cables or building mobile phone masts across the country, which could be lost in the vicious circle of corruption (hence, increasing the value of product) and infrastructural problems (which already subsist).

People living in areas without any existing internet infrastructure would be directly connected to the internet without any mediating technology. It would thus help them to easily access the information and opportunities of the world-wide web.

At present, Indian entrepreneurs, as well as the government, are foraying into developing user-targeted online education systems.

In this regard, this technology will be able to connect the remotely situated students to easy access of online education centres.

On the other hand, farmers of isolated villages would be able to utilize easy connectivity for learning new cultivating, fertilizing, pest control, weeding and harvesting techniques.

If the Project Loon initiative by Google, in collaboration with the Indian government, falls on the right trajectory, then India would get benefitted by this technology in many ways. The rural and isolated parts of our country could straightforwardly become a part of the 'Digital India' campaign.

Most importantly, mere 15% of Indians use the internet at all, according to a new report by the Economic World Forum (WEF). In this age of digitization, Indians would be greatly benefited from projects such as Loon, which can help bridge the information gaps in the areas of agriculture, education and communications.