Google always has lofty ambitions. It seems like only yesterday we were talking about the company’s Project Loon , in which balloons were being launched to bring LTE access to remote areas of the world.
Rumor has it that Google is now ratcheting things up with Project SkyBender, a 5G “Internet in the sky” program that could (in time) beam 1Gbps to 10Gbps Internet connectivity to earth. Only this time it isn’t balloons doing the job; it’s plane-like drones.
The earliest reports came from The Guardian, which stated that the plan was to outfit drones with transceivers that work in spectrum allocated for use by 5G technologies. While nothing is confirmed, New Mexico appears to be the testing ground for the new drones. You will find plenty of technical details from this Ars Technica article, including all the testing requirements before the project will see the light of day.
5G coverage may be a way down the road, but it’s projects like these that certainly provide us with a glimpse of where cellular backhaul services will take us next.
And we’ll keep doing our part in making sure that CEL-FI keeps up, so those signals don’t lose their strength once they’re earthbound.
Do you see a future for aerial 5G services?
By Werner Sievers, CEO