| Weather balloons could be answer to rural broadband woes - Thursday 21 February 2008 | | Print | |
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A solution to the problem of broadband and mobile phone services provision in rural britain could be on the horizon - weather balloons. An American company, Space Data, has been doing this in rural America with some success. How does it work? A small phone mast (a lunchbox-sized transceiver) is attached to a balloon that is then released. The baloon rises to an altitude of about 100,000ft (30,500m), from where it can beam a signal to an area equivalent to 80 mobile phone towers. Apparently it takes only 70 balloons to cover the entire United States. In the US, local farmers and other land workers have been are paid to release the balloons. |