Internet balloons in rural India

If everything goes as planned, rural India will soon see floating helium balloons at an altitude of 20 km or twice the height of which commercial aircraft flies. These balloons will yield Internet connectivity and these 15 metre wide balloons can stay in the air for 100 days.

Earlier in the month, this project titled ‘Project Loon’ was launched in New Zealand and 30 balloons out in rural air gave Internet access to fifty test users.  India has a huge internet market having over 130 million Internet users and 900 million mobile phone users, half of whom use their mobile phones to access internet. In rural India, wherein every house or village may or may not have access to a computer, ‘Project Loon’ could probably change that.

This could be the augment of change that rural India needs. Access to easy Internet and a computer or even a mobile phone could change their lives. But one wonders how does one prevent aircrafts from bumping into these balloons? And does this mean that in the future, expensive telecom towers could actually become redundant?