4 ms·
One thing people keep overlooking is the amount of power you'd need to draw to communicate with something that is that far. Your phone's battery would be dead i
by dguaraglia 12y ago
One thing people keep overlooking is the amount of power you'd need to draw to communicate with something that is that far. Your phone's battery would be dead in a few hours.
The lead of the Loon project seemed pretty positive about it when I asked him, but I guess his aim is to provide LTE to areas without any coverage at all, instead of trying to use this as a substitute for proper infrastructure.
- nknighthb 12y agoUnfortunately, that's already reality in some areas with usable (though not great) LTE coverage. Having a more direct LOS to the balloon is a significant mitigating factor. There's also a factor not being noted here. The population at which a cell tower is feasible may drop substantially if the uplink consists of pointing an antenna at these balloons, increasing the number of relatively tiny villages that can have semi-conventional LTE service.