Project Loon Sends Puerto Rico LTE Data Rescue Balloons
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After hurricane storms hit Puerto Rico, the country's access to water, electricity, and communication are in a state of emergency.
As of Saturday, according to the Washington Post, 11.7% have electricity, 55.5% have water, and 44% have cell phone service.
Now Alphabet, Google's parent company, is stepping in to help with their Project Loon by flying large data balloons over disaster zones in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands until April 4, 2018, enabling much-needed communications. However, we don't know how much they area they will actually cover.
[Google] X spokesperson, Libby Leahy, said: “To deliver signal to people’s devices, Loon needs be integrated with a telco partner’s network—the balloons can’t do it alone. We’ve been making solid progress on this next step and would like to thank everyone who’s been lending a hand.”
Sources:
https://gizmodo.com/alphabets-x-approved-to-deploy-project-loon-lte-balloon-1819252170
