The business of bringing internet to Ngoutchoumi

The business of bringing internet to Ngoutchoumi

The umpteenth pulse between two giants like Google and Facebook is not played in cyberspace. Neither on the mainland nor in the depths of the sea, where the cables that carry internet from one continent to another travel.

 The last confrontation is played at 70,000 feet in the stratosphere. There, above the storms, blizzards and other meteorological phenomena, both firms intend to install the bases of their last great project: a network of unmanned aircraft that connects to the most recondite and remote places of the world geography, whether the remote fali community of Ngoutchoumi, north of Cameroon, as well as the top of Machu Pichu, in Peru.

The firm of Mountain View has been the last to move piece to take over Titan Aerospace, a company dedicated to the manufacture of solar 'drones', which also came to enter the plans of Facebook. The social network - whose founder Mark Zuckerberg is the main supporter of the project 'Internet.org' - had opened the piggy bank weeks before to spend 20 million on another company in the sector, Ascenta. The devices that Titan Aerospace plans to build could reach a flight autonomy of up to 5,000 hours and load with transmitters of more than one hundred kilos in weight, with the possibilities that this entails.

"Despite being in an initial development phase, atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people," said a source from the network's best-known search engine this week. The company will maintain its headquarters in advance. New Mexico and its 20 workers will collaborate with other lines of research of the firm.

Relocated military drones
PENTAGON PROJECT

The United States, the most active country when it comes to using unmanned aircraft with military objectives, also intends to take the Internet to remote areas where Pentagon troops are located with these devices. In this case, it has reused a fleet of surveillance drones that were used in Iraq to reuse them as Wi-Fi antennas.

It would be a squadron of 'RQ7 Shadow' - with only 3.2 meters long and weighing 184 kilos - that would be equipped with an antenna that could offer speeds of up to one gigabyte per second, thus getting the Marines in complicated areas have benefits similar to those of other more developed areas.

We are pleased with the achievements we have seen so far, said Dick Ridgway, director of the Darpa program,

One of these projects is 'Loon' which aims to bring Wi-Fi to isolated areas by means of balloons equipped with a radio frequency antennae that float at 20,000 meters of altitude of the 40th parallel, which runs between other areas of the planet Africa, the Antipodes or America. Latina Depending on the conditions, each of these 'repeaters' could serve an area of ​​about 1,000 square kilometers and to connect it would only require a small antenna that communicates with the unit that floats on the roof.

This network - in the form of a ring - would be controlled from a control center that seeks to take advantage of the behavior of the air currents - with the consequent saving by eliminating motor movement - to make the necessary adjustments to continue providing the internet. The first test was carried out in 2013 on New Zealand and progressively it has been taking to other points of the planet, although Google does not detail which.

Now with Titan Aerospace follows the trail that marked Facebook with Ascenta. The project championed by Zuckerberg, which has the backing of companies such as Nokia or Qualcomm, aims to put into play an 'army' of 11,000 teams that will work in shifts.

In spite of the philanthropic imprint they have given to the Google and Facebook project, if they manage to make their projects economically viable and overcome the reluctance of the different governments, the reality is that providing access to the internet to the millions of people who lack it. today would open a new possibility for their respective businesses. More internet users, more data to manage and exploit.

Although it is difficult to quantify the exact figures, in 2012 -according to Internet Access data- the number of people connected reached 32% of the world population, which translates into some 2,300 million people out of a total of 7,200 million. A figure that could rise to 3,600 million in 2017, according to a Cisco report released at the end of last year, before these initiatives were on everyone's lips.

'Lobbies' and regulation

We also have to wait for the telecommunications operators to position themselves before this the evolution of this new career. After the bleeding of income produced by early retirement of SMS or the fall of calls with the transformation of the world under the paradigm of 'smartphone', it will be interesting to see how they adapt to the arrival of new challenges, which is looming a frantic struggle of 'lobbies' in regulation.

A regulation that the European Union began to carbure in an informal way this week with the statements with Siim Kallas, European Commissioner for Transport, who put on the table the need for a new regulatory framework for the sector of 'drones' for civil purposes, necessary for things like internet.org or the initiative of Amazon to deliver orders at home with these tools in less than an hour once the order is made.

Kallas assured that the industry is waiting for this pronouncement on the part of Brussels, since there is fear "to realize certain developments" and that soon they are prohibited. The term that is managed for this task, which will be done through the EASA, is two years. All to promote an activity that could involve a turnover of about 15,000 million euros a year in the Old Continent, where today a third of the 1,700 types of 'drones' are manufactured