Alphabet's Project Loon partnering with Indonesia telecoms for air balloon Wi-Fi test

Project Loon, the ambitious initiative to bring balloon-delivered internet access to remote areas and developing countries, is partnering with three of Indonesia's biggest telecom companies for a country-wide test period starting in 2016.

Executives from the three companies — Telkomsel, XL Axiata, and Indosat — revealed the plan alongside Loon project leader Mike Cassidy and Alphabet president / original Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Indonesia marks the fourth country behind Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia in which Loon will fly its balloons more than 12 miles in the sky to beam down internet access to any LTE-capable smartphone. For Indonesia, expanding Internet access is important because only one out of every three residents can connect to the web today. Even when connected, the data speeds are incredibly slow by modern standards. With Loon, Google is able to take a signal produced from one of Indonesia's telecom companies and redistribute it through the skies.