I find Loon interesting because Australia’s NBN for bush dwellers zoned for Satellite is woeful for anyone who actually wants to use it for more than email.
NBN satellite has good speed, total coverage, and reasonable pricing, but the bit that bites is the maximum monthly 90GB peak limit. You aren’t even allowed to pay more for more if you want to, and there is no indication it will increase.
Maybe it’s simply the bandwidth limit of the satellites. But it’s annoying to note that a local airline can get terrabytes/day from the same satellite just to serve unlimited Netflix to it’s customers.
Loon could provide competition for NBN satellite - if indeed it is more than a pipe dream, and would consider deploying in this country (I know that’s not it’s stated business plan).
From a technical point of view, it is completely beyond my comprehension that they consider maintaining a fleet of balloons floating above a location with the endless vagaries of winds and weather even a possibility worth investigating.
Seems fanciful to me, but they’ve been testing for quite a while now and haven’t been put off yet, so either Google is onto something or they have more money than sense.
Is it timely to remind ourselves that in 2015 it was promoted widely that a Google driverless car would be available at a dealer near you by 2020? I’ve got my deposit ready... 270 more sleeps!