Internet balloon service discontinued after company shuts down

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan, 22 – Months after President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the approval of google Loon services in the country in a bid to enable universal 4G data coverage, the service has been discontinued after Loon LLC, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc shutdown services.

Loon Chief Executive Alastair Westgarth revealed that though the decision to shut down the company was not easy, it was no longer commercially viable.

“While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business. The road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than we hoped,” said Westgarth.

A surging demand for mobile connectivity across the world made towers cost-effective than the company had initially anticipated.

Telkom Kenya which embarked on the project with Google saloon said the services will end on March 1.

“Telkom believes in taking bold decisions. It was very exciting therefore, to partner with like-minded pioneers in the adoption and usage of innovative technologies such as Loon, with the aim of filling in the internet access gaps in areas that were difficult to service,” Telkom Kenya CEO Mugo Kibati said in a statement.

The company’s operations in the country had however took longer than expected to kick-off due to regulatory delays.

In March 2020, President Kenyatta announced the introduction of Loon into the country.

He said this was in line with the government’s measures to respond to the disruptions caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“In that regard, and to foster communication and enable Kenyans to retain and enhance remote access to the Offices and Enterprises, My Administration has granted approvals that will ensure universal 4G Data Coverage throughout Kenya,” said the President when he briefed the press at State House Nairobi.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) had signed an agreement with Google Loon allowing Loon Balloons to fly over Kenya’s airspace.

The balloons, which hover about 12 miles up in the stratosphere, well above commercial airplanes was to initially provide a 4G LTE network connection to a nearly 31,000-square-mile area across central and western Kenya, including the capital, Nairobi.

The balloons had previously been used only in emergency situations, such as in Puerto Rico in 2017 after Hurricane Maria wiped out cell towers.

Prior to its operations in the country, technology experts said the balloons would be better deployed elsewhere since Kenya was already providing internet services to majority of its citizens.

The project was also seen as a litmus test to other African countries who wanted to adopt is services.

Loon, which is based in California and started operating in 2011, is one of the so-called moonshots to emerge from Alphabet’s research and development lab, known as X. Loon.

It was spun off into a separate company in 2018 with the mandate to be a viable enterprise of its own.

Other companies that have emerged from X.loon include Waymo and Alphabet’s self-driving car unit.