To the Loon and back... Loon is the LTE balloon company spun out of Google's secretive X Lab of moonshot projects. Loon balloons (Loons?) fly twice as high as planes (12 miles up), casting internet down to areas with underdeveloped infrastructure. Now the Alphabet-owned floating phenom just sealed a key deal in Mozambique.
- Loon inked that with mobile carrier Vodacom, expanding Voda's commercial internet service in Africa — from its super-high Loons.
- Only 40% of people in Africa have internet access, and just 21% of people in Mozambique do (FB stat: in December, Mozambique had 2.4M Facebook users out of a population of 31M) — so this is a huge untapped market for online companies.
The problem is lack of infrastructure... Many rural/remote or underdeveloped areas around the world lack the strong ground infrastructure needed for internet connectivity. Loons solve that problem by basically acting as floating broadband cell towers.
- Cell towers aren't economical in rural areas, but Loons are 12 miles up into the stratosphere (rad), and are able to economically cover more rural regions.
- By expanding its service in nearby African markets (Loon is in Kenya, too), Loon can strategically position its balloons to consistently cover multiple areas even when air currents change.
Google can get paid twice with Loon... First, by signing deals with cell carriers like Vodacom and getting paid to expand coverage with its floating balloons. Second, by connecting more of the world to the internet, getting more people Googling, and therefore selling more ads. Around 42% of the world doesn't have internet access — that's over 3B people Loon/Google could potentially make money from (twice).