Google considering Internet balloons to connect sub-Saharan Africa

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Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Google is working on a “multi-pronged effort” to build wireless networks that could connect more than a billion people in emerging markets.

According to unnamed sources, the company wants to connect people outside of major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia through a combination of frequencies used for television broadcasting, special balloons or blimps transmitting on non-TV broadcast frequencies, and potentially through satellite transmissions. Making wireless speed faster in urban centers is also a potential goal for the project, the WSJ's sources said.

Sources also said that Google might be looking to team up with local telecommunications companies to achieve greater wireless coverage, but it is still unclear whether any deals are on the table yet. The WSJ said that Google is talking to regulators in South Africa and Kenya to create a network through television broadcast frequencies, and that “some wireless executives say they expect such changes to happen in the coming years.”

In addition to TV frequencies, Google may try to develop an airborne fleet of wireless access points. “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.”

The article suggested that these steps would facilitate the adoption of some of the low-cost Android smartphones that Google and other companies have been pushing forward in recent years. While it's no secret that Google has been hoping to grow Android in Africa, India, and China, the news suggests that Google could embrace a strategy to control the whole ecosystem of smartphone technology in those areas. “The activities underscore how the Web search giant is increasingly aiming to have control over every aspect of a person's connection to the Web across the globe,” the WSJ wrote. “More Internet users, in turn, would drive online advertising on many of Google's services. The company currently derives 87% of its annual $50 billion in revenue from selling online ads.”