Baloon powered internet for India by Google

Project Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet acess to rural and remote areas. The project uses high altitude baloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20 km (12 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds 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. Google feels this will greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can't afford to lay underground fiber cable Google will float helium balloons over rural India for Internet connectivity if an experiment testing the concept yields promising results The plan is to have several balloons floating around the earth at an altitude of 20 km, or twice the height at which commercial aircraft fly, and beaming connectivity to areas that are not served by traditional copper or fibre optic networks. Special equipment that can be fixed on the roofs will communicate with the balloon, acting as the link enabling the user to communicate with the balloon. he company claims that connection speeds will be comparable to typical 3G access provided by cellular networks. India has over 130 million Internet users, and nearly 900 million cell-phone users, an increasing number of whom are using their mobile phones to access the internet. Google sees "great potential" in the south India and hopes to double the number of sales and distribution partners it works with by 2014