Project Loon to Indonesia

The ecosystem for a new product is extremely important. If a product lands in  the right place at the right time, mass adoption can be very swift.

The best quick example is the fax machine. It was a great machine, but it's adoption had to be relatively slow. If you have a machine that can send and receive documents and no one else has one, then your machine doesn't do you any good. Early adopters would have purchased pairs of them - one for each remote office.

Look at virtual reality. If there are virtual reality headsets, they can be the most awesome devices ever created, but if there isn't any content for them, they will fail.

Now look at PicoP. Big screen in a small package. For it to succeed -there has to be content. There is a HUGE amount of content that's available online and accessible through mobile devices. 

The other essential is bandwidth. Widespread networks that can deliver the content to mobile devices. In much of the world this isn't a problem. In other parts of the world it's a significant problem.

Google is working on a solution to this that we should pay attention to. They are going to provide access to all of Indonesia in a very unique way, and apparently very soon.

Google Project Loon - DNA India

Indonesia is the fourth country following Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia, where Project Loon will beam down internet access to smartphones. The balloons fly about 20km above the Earth's surface, moving with the wind to reposition, and forming one large communications array. This technology is particularly useful in countries like Indonesia, which is a collection of about 17,000 islands with mountains and jungles in between, making it difficult to install cell towers or fibre optic cables.

ChinaTopix

Project Loon at Google