Facebook and Google are spending billions trying to get more people online in Africa, but the Internet giants are facing a backlash from governments worried about technology being used to remove them from power.
Browsing: Loon
Following Alphabet’s decision on Thursday to kill off its Loon Internet balloon start-up, Vodacom Group has said it will no longer proceed with a Loon project to deliver communications in rural Mozambique.
Google parent Alphabet is shutting down its Internet balloon business, Loon, which aimed to provide a less expensive alternative to cellphone towers, saying on Thursday that it was not commercially viable.
Alphabet began offering the world’s first commercial high-speed Internet using balloons to villagers in remote regions of Kenya’s Rift Valley on Wednesday.
Vodacom on Wednesday announced that it has formed a partnership with Google parent Alphabet to offer Internet access in rural Mozambique using Loon Internet balloons.
Human beings can be exasperating creatures. We go from amazement to bored entitlement so quickly that even rapidly evolving technology is soon passé. Geosynchronous satellites? Ho hum. Smartphones? Yawn. So it takes something quite special to remind us of the wonders of technology, and Google Loon