Sri Lanka braves monsoon with Loon broadband balloons Service to launch just weeks before monsoon hits, complete with rain and wind a-plenty Sri Lanka has signed up for broadband services delivered by Google's “Project Loon” broadband balloons. The Indian ocean nation's minister for foreign affairs, telecommunications and IT Mangala Samaraweera this week took to the stage …
"Neither Google nor Sri Lanka has revealed just how many balloons will fly"
Multiple sites are reporting that it would take about a dozen to cover the entire country and that each balloon can service about 5000 square kilometers. The area of Sri Lanka is 65,610 square kilometers.
More than 12-13 might be required for redundancy but it sounds like a lower number than you'd expect for a country with a population of over 20 million (although the point is to fill in coverage gaps to service all of the rural areas, not urban areas). If they're lucky, they might be able to get by relaunching just 1 balloon per week.
The way Loon works, with the balloons constantly moving and changing height to get to different parts of the jet-stream to move in different directions (there is a good YouTube video on this about the New Zealand trial) you need several balloons repositioning for each active one.
It's a fascinating project but I don't think politically workable.
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