After months since Hurricane Maria hit the island of Puerto Rico, the territory is still in the process of recovering. More than half of the island's inhabitants don't have access to electricity, which makes communicating with friends, family, and to the rest of the world nearly impossible.
To help solve this problem, the team at X, which is a semi-secret research-and-development facility founded by Google for its parent company Alphabet, launched several balloons as part of its Project Loon mobile internet service.
Partnering with AT&T and T-Mobile, Project Loon brings both internet and LTE coverage to the island, connecting 100,000 people in Puerto Rico.
"In times of crisis, being able to communicate with loved ones, emergency services and critical information is key," said Loon project lead Alastair Westgarth. "We hope that the connectivity Project Loon has provided over the last few weeks has been helpful."
Since turning on service, #ProjectLoon has delivered basic internet connectivity to more than 100K people in Puerto Rico. https://t.co/s0zmFB9dRy
— The Team at X (@Theteamatx) November 9, 2017
The balloons were launched from Nevada. Using machine learning algorithms, the balloons predict the direction of air currents and navigated over Puerto Rico. The project was granted an experimental license by the FCC, and Loon.
With Project Loon, Google and its partners have connected only a fraction of the 3.5 million people that live in Puerto Rico. But with more balloons and with the reparation of dedicated infrastructures, Puerto Rico is expecting to get the rest of the island back online as soon as possible.
Loon that deployed its balloons in late October, was its fastest-ever deployment in an effort to help people get online. In the past, Westgarth noted that Project Loon has never fired up internet from scratch this rapidly.
Alphabet owed a lot to all collaborators, from the mobile carriers to Pan-American and Puerto Rican governments' aviation authorities to local communications companies.
