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Google balloons, “cell towers in the sky,” can serve 4G to a state the size of Rhode Island would be more accurate. To have a minimum coverage, you would need

by vmarsy 12y ago

Google balloons, “cell towers in the sky,” can serve 4G to a state the size of Rhode Island would be more accurate. To have a minimum coverage, you would need 140 of them to cover Texas, ~2,000 to cover the USA, ~6,000 to cover Africa (each balloon covers ~5,000km²)

higherpurpose 12y ago
So covering the whole of US could cost them somewhere around ~$1 billion?
- mvid 12y ago
  Texas has a lot of uninhabited land, as does the USA and Africa. Is that being accounted for?
  - vmarsy 12y ago
    Definitely not, it's just an estimation of what you would need to have a 4G coverage everywhere. Areas with a very low population density are not completely uninhabited, there's at least a few persons. But yeah in a big national park or in the middle of a big lake you probably don't need 4G as much
    - Tycho 12y ago
      would be interesting to see how people's behaviour would change if they had fast internet no matter where they went
      - ioddly 12y ago
        It would be considered exciting and dangerous to go somewhere without the internet. To some degree I suppose it's already true about phone service.
  - notatoad 12y ago
    balloons are not stationary. To cover inhabited areas, you also have to cover the uninhabited areas or else you're only going to have service for as long as it takes the balloon to drift overhead.
- vmarsy 12y ago
  I wonder what would be the cost of producing/operating a balloon and changing it every 187 days (or probably more often, the probability of having them destroyed by some random objects would increase). There would need to have a few towers on the ground too
- robszumski 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Verizon or AT&T would love to blanket an area of that size for only $1B. While you won't get the same speeds as Fiber, the economics still work out well.
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    $2B every 6 months? That's a huge cost in my book. Not to mention reliability issues, downstream power limitation and low upstream capacity compared to cell towers.
    - robszumski 12y ago
      It's large, but they'll hopefully keep increasing the longevity of the flights and be able to get that cost down. Gaps in coverage will be a huge issue that could possibly balloon the total cost due to tighter density.
mrinterweb 12y ago
You'd need a lot more than that for coverage. These balloons are not stationary. They are constantly traveling around the Earth. At the very least, need the balloons around the circumference of the earth. Also, I doubt that the coverage is a perfect square. I'd think the coverage footprint would be more circular, and so you'd need overlap in order to get coverage.

by vmarsy 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago

So covering the whole of US could cost them somewhere around ~$1 billion?

mvid 12y ago
Texas has a lot of uninhabited land, as does the USA and Africa. Is that being accounted for?
- vmarsy 12y ago
  Definitely not, it's just an estimation of what you would need to have a 4G coverage everywhere. Areas with a very low population density are not completely uninhabited, there's at least a few persons. But yeah in a big national park or in the middle of a big lake you probably don't need 4G as much
  - Tycho 12y ago
    would be interesting to see how people's behaviour would change if they had fast internet no matter where they went
    - ioddly 12y ago
      It would be considered exciting and dangerous to go somewhere without the internet. To some degree I suppose it's already true about phone service.
- notatoad 12y ago
  balloons are not stationary. To cover inhabited areas, you also have to cover the uninhabited areas or else you're only going to have service for as long as it takes the balloon to drift overhead.
vmarsy 12y ago
I wonder what would be the cost of producing/operating a balloon and changing it every 187 days (or probably more often, the probability of having them destroyed by some random objects would increase). There would need to have a few towers on the ground too
robszumski 12y ago
I'm pretty sure that Verizon or AT&T would love to blanket an area of that size for only $1B. While you won't get the same speeds as Fiber, the economics still work out well.
- darkmighty 12y ago
  $2B every 6 months? That's a huge cost in my book. Not to mention reliability issues, downstream power limitation and low upstream capacity compared to cell towers.
  - robszumski 12y ago
    It's large, but they'll hopefully keep increasing the longevity of the flights and be able to get that cost down. Gaps in coverage will be a huge issue that could possibly balloon the total cost due to tighter density.

mrinterweb 12y ago

You'd need a lot more than that for coverage. These balloons are not stationary. They are constantly traveling around the Earth. At the very least, need the balloons around the circumference of the earth. Also, I doubt that the coverage is a perfect square. I'd think the coverage footprint would be more circular, and so you'd need overlap in order to get coverage.