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Google set to connect Africa with wireless network

Google is working on connecting a billion or more new Internet users in the Africa, Asia and other developing countries, to wireless networks.



The search engine giant will finance, build and help to operate high altitude platforms using balloons and blimps - rather than traditional infrastructure - to carry a signal that can transmit to areas of hundreds of square kilometres, well-suited to provide internet to developing communities.

Google is also lobbying regulators to allow for the use of airwaves reserved for television broadcasting that operate at low frequencies known as ‘white space’ that can pass more easily over longer distances.

A trial to test the feasibility of this technology had already begun in partnership with the Tertiary Education and Research Network of SA (Tenet) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in March according to Business Insider.

In Cape Town, just one of the chosen trial locations, Google is using a base station with wireless access boxes to broadcast signals over long distances.

As part of the plan, Google has been working on building an ecosystem of new microprocessors and low-cost smartphones powered by its Android mobile operating system to connect to the wireless networks, these people said. And the Internet search giant has worked on making special balloons or blimps, known as high-altitude platforms, to transmit signals to an area of hundreds of square miles, though such a network would involve frequencies other than the TV broadcast ones.

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