Google's Project Loon close to launching thousands of balloons

Google says its Project Loon is close to being able to produce and launch thousands of balloons to provide Internet access from the sky. Such a number would be required to provide reliable Internet access to users in remote areas that are currently unserved by terrestrial networks, said Mike Cassidy, the Google engineer in charge of the project. The ambitious project has been under way for a couple of years and involves beaming down LTE cellular signals to handsets on the ground from balloons thousands of feet in the air, well above the altitude that passenger jets fly. "At first it would take us 3 or 4 days to tape together a balloon," Cassidy says in the video. "Today, through our own manufacturing facility, the automated systems can get a balloon produced in just a few hours. We're getting close to the point where we can roll out thousands of balloons."

Trials are currently underway with Telstra in Australia, Telefonica in Latin America and with Vodafone in New Zealand, where the video appears to have been largely shot. Maps tracking the path of balloons over the country are seen at several points in the video. At a European conference in March, a Google executive said the balloons were staying aloft for up to 6 months at a time.