Google will provide Sri Lanka with internet balloons

Google will provide high-speed Internet access to residents of Sri Lanka. Access to the network will be made with balloons running over the Indian Ocean. This is reported by Yahoo News.

"The whole island of Sri Lanka from south to north will be provided with affordable high-speed Internet using Google Loon techniques," said the country's high-tech minister Mangal Samaverevere. Thus, Sri Lanka will become the first country in South Asia with full Internet coverage.

Local Internet providers will also connect to the balloons, which will increase the speed and quality of their communication services.

Balloon preparation will end by March 2016. They will be raised to a height twice the level of commercial airliners.

Providing access to the network of residents of Sri Lanka is part of the Project Loon program, under which Google distributes the Internet from balloons equipped with high-tech equipment that is powered by solar panels. Google states that the project will provide access to the network for people in remote or poorest regions of the Earth. Internet speed will be the same as in third generation mobile networks.

Test tests Project Loon took place in 2013 year in New Zealand. Google launched thirty balloons in the Canterbury region, which provided fifty volunteers from the local community with the Internet.

The Facebook social network, as part of the Internet.org project, is also working on innovative technologies for connecting private users to the Internet. For this purpose, the company intends to use the Aquila drone, whose design image Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented to the public in May.

More than twenty million people live in Sri Lanka. 2,8 millions of users access the Internet via mobile networks, while only 606 thousands of people in the country have wired access to the World Wide Web.