I doubt that any elementary school in the US has fiber to the premises, but, in 2013, an elementary school in rural Bhutan was connected to the Internet using optical fiber in the "last mile."
They were able to connect the school because the cabling they used, metal-packed armored cable (M-PAC), which is modeled on undersea cables, does not have to be in a protective duct. It is 4mm in diameter, light and flexible, so it can be installed by supervised volunteers or unskilled workers.
As shown below, a portion of the cable to the school is buried in a hand-dug ditch and another link is suspended overhead:
The cable used in this installation was supplied by OCC Corporation, but last June the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) adodpted a standard for "low-cost sustainable telecommunications infrastructure for rural communications in developing countries," L.1700.
As a framework standard, L.1700 is largely technology-neutral. Technology-specific best practices are provided by supplement texts such as ITU-T L Supplement 22, which specifies the design of a low-cost, terabit-capable optical cable that can be deployed on the ground’s surface with minimal expense and environmental impact. For more on the standard and it's intended application, check this post.
We have major fiber backbones in large cities -- might we also have do-it-yourself backbones in rural villages?
The Khan Academy began when hedge fund analyst Sal Khan started posting short, conversational videos on YouTube to help his cousin with her math class. The videos went viral. Today there are 23 courses in math, 7 in science, 4 in economics and finance, 25 in the arts and humanities, 3 in computing and preparation for 8 tests like the SAT along with content from 25 high-profile partners.
The Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that promises to provide a world-class education that is "free for everyone forever," and their open source software is available on GitHub. Over 39 million "learners" have used the material and it is being translated into 40 languages.
As shown below, the courses are comprised of fine-grained modules focused on a single concept and each module includes a test of mastery. The modules are arranged hierarchically, and a student has not completed the course until he or she has mastered a module -- they encourage experimentation and failure, but expect mastery. (Getting a C in a typical college course means the student understood only about half of the material and will do poorly in classes for which the course is a prerequisite -- an effect that compounds throughout college and into the workplace).
Portion of the beginning arithmetic course knowledge graph
In addition to the teaching content, the Khan Academy software presents a "dashboard" that enables a teacher, parent or other "coach" to monitor the progress of a student or class. The red bar shown in the dashboard view below indicates that a student is stuck on a given concept. The teacher can then help him or her or, better yet, have a student who has already mastered the concept tutor the one who is stuck. (Research shows that the tutor will benefit as well as the tutee -- "to teach is to learn twice").
Dashboard with fine-grained progress reports
The dashboard enables a coach to adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of each student and spot learning gaps. They understand that students may be blocked by one simple concept, and sprint ahead once it is mastered. (I recall sitting in freshman calculus class, and being totally lost for half the term, until I figured out what the teacher meant when he said "is a function of" and the class snapped into focus).
Confusion on a single concept "blocked" this student.
The third major component facilitates community discussion among the students taking a given class, allowing for questions, answers, comments and tips & thanks.
Tracking student participation in the course community
But, what if you don't have Internet access?
Learning Equality grew out of a project to port the Khan Academy software to a local area network at the University of California at San Diego. Their version, KA-Lite, can be customized for an individual learner, classroom or school running on a Linux, Mac or Windows PC as small as a $35 Raspberry Pi.
KA-Lite is three years old and has been used in 160 nations by over 2 million learners from above the Arctic Circle to the tip of Chile and translations are under way into 17 languages. The following shows organizations that are deploying it and installations.
See this companion post on MIT's Open Courseware, which is also available off line.
For the history, pedagogical philosophy, accomplishments and future of the Khan Academy along with a video collage showing examples of their content, see this 20-minute talk by Sal Khan:
I've been studying and working on the Internet in developing nations since 1991 when only a few nations had any sort of Internet connection, as shown in Larry Landweber's 1991 connectivity map:
Every nation is connected today, but the digital divide remains as deep as it was in 1991. Both Facebook and Google are working to bring the 3-4 billion people who do not have Internet connectivity online and they described their efforts at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Google
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google Inc., updated the audience on two projects -- Project Loon and Project Link.
Project Loon seeks to deploy a constellation of balloons at an altitude of around 20 kilometers -- above the mountains, air traffic and weather.
The balloons will be airborne routers able to communicate with end users, each other and Internet back-haul locations.
Pinchai said the balloons now average more than six months in the air and keep nearby smartphones operating at 4G or LTE speeds, around 10 megabits per second. “We are well on our way to a platform that, by the end of the decade, will touch 4 to 5 billion people.”
He also gave a progress report on Project Link in Kampala, Uganda where they have installed over 800km of fiber, creating an urban backbone.
As is often the case with municipal networks (as in Stockholm), Google is not a retail Internet service provider, but provides wholesale connectivity to retailers. Pichai said they would be expanding Project Link -- installing fiber backbones "many more" African cities this year.
For more on the Kampala deployment and a thoughtful analysis of the reason for its success, see this post by Steve Song.
Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about Internet.org, which hopes to make basic internet services affordable, so everyone with a phone can join the knowledge economy.
While Google is working on long range projects (including an investment in Elon Musk's SpaceX project to provide Internet service using low-earth orbit satellites), Internet.org is already up and running in Ghana, Columia, Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia and India.
Facebook and their Internet.org partners are focusing on improving traditional terrestrial cell phone technology by improving mobile infrastructure, mass producing cheap, powerful cell phones and caching and compressing data. Their partners reflect this orientation – phone manufacturers, Opera, a Web software company, and Mediatek, a fabless semiconductor company.
Facebook also has a Connectivity Lab lab working on more exotic, long-range solutions.
Short videos on Project Loon and Internet.org
Project Loon:
Internet.org:
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Update 4/10/2015
Mark Zuckerberg spoke at a business conference being held in conjunction with the Summit of the Americas in Panama City yesterday. He announced that Internet.org would be available in Panama and stated that eventually expanding into Cuba “definitely fits within our mission.” (Recall that Internet.org provides “basic Internet services" -- access to leading Web sites -- not access to the open Internet).
(See the related post on cost savings from re-use of rockets used in launching satellites).
In the early 1990s, cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal founded Teledesic, with the intention of providing global Internet connectivity using low-earth orbit satellites. The satellite and launch technology were not good enough and the company failed.
Teledesic animation showing a satellite
constellation that would cover the planet.
But satellite and launch technology have come a long way since that time. In an earlier post, I asked whether Google could connect the "other three billion" in developing nations and rural areas. The post surveyed Google projects involving high altitude platforms like blimps, drones or balloons that hover or circulate in the stratosphere, low-earth orbit satellites used for imaging and telephony and medium-earth orbit satellites used for communications and navigation.
One of those projects was a collaboration with O3b (other three billion), a company founded by ex-Google executive Greg Wyler. O3b began with four satellites in 8,000-kilometer equatorial orbits and planned to serve all parts of the Earth within 45 degrees of the Equator. Wyler has left O3b when he went to Google and O3b and now has 12 satellites in orbit.
In describing the O3b project, I wondered "whether they are considering a low-earth orbit constellation" and it seems they were. Mr. Wyler subsequently left O3b to found WorldVu, which planned a constellation of 300 satellites at between 800 and 950 kilometers in altitude and has acquired Ku-band spectrum. Service will be marketed under the OneWeb brand.
That takes care of the improved satellite technology, but how about launch technology?
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article saying that Mr. Wyler would be teaming up with Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX to provide global Internet access using a constellation of 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds. Musk confirmed the plan in a couple of Twitter posts, but also criticized the Wall Street Journal reporting.
I hope they will be able to realize Teledesic's 1990 vision using 2020 technology.
I concluded my earlier post on this topic by "wondering whether Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic are eyeing those other three billion people." I still wonder about Bezos and Branson.
Update 11/13/2014
After writing this post, I attended a session at Rand Corporation's Politics Aside conference and had a chance to ask Simonetta Di Pippo, the Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, about her take on this proposal. She did not give a direct answer, but said that Elon Musk is a very smart man and he has never failed to succeed at anything he committed to do.
A SpaceX executive overheard my question and said he could not comment, but he reiterated Elon Musk's tweeted statement that the Wall Street Journal article had errors and we would have to wait a couple of months for the full announcement of their plans.
I guess we will have to wait to see, but this could be a Big Deal.
Two Plane Labs satellites just after launch from the ISS
The satellites shown being launched are Planet Labs earth-imaging satellites. They are smaller and orbit at lower altitude than those discussed above, but might a constellation of more, smaller satellites in lower orbits and carrying routers rather than cameras be suitable for Internet communication? (That is not a rhetorical question -- I do not know).
Whoever builds the rockets, satellites and markets the service, it sounds like Teledesic is being reborn using modern technology and, if successful, it would be a major extension of the nervous system of the Earth and a significant enabler of Bill Gates' work in developing nations.
Greg Wyler wants to bring the Internet to the entire world.
Update 1/17/2015
Elon Musk announced that he plans to deploy a constellation of router equipped-satellites -- evidently in competition with the Greg Wyler's OneWeb project. Musk announced his plan at a closed meeting for potential employees of his new satellite office and state, local and federal government officials.
This effort is not an end in itself, but part of a larger plan to reach Mars -- Musk says he wants to die on Mars.
It is terrific to see two powerful groups competing to fulfill Bill Gates' original vision of global satellite connectivity -- Teledesic. Teledesic failed, but with modern launch capability, micro-satellites and communication equipment one or both of these efforts may very well succeed. If they do, it will be an historic achievement and a significant complement to Gates' current work in developing nations.
Elon Musk will compete with OneWeb
Update 1/19/2015
When this thread began last November, it seemed like Elon Musk and Greg Wyler would collaborate on an Internet satellite venture, but now it looks more like competition.
A post on Ars Technica quotes Musk as saying “Greg and I have a fundamental disagreement about the architecture -- we want a satellite that is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than what Greg wants. I think there should be two competing systems.”
They quote Richard Branson as saying that Musk doesn't have a chance because Wyler has spectrum rights and there is not enough space for two satellite constellations. He thinks the logical thing for Musk to do is work together rather than separately.
I can't wait to see where all this ends up in, say, five years.
Update 1/20/2015
SpaceX has confirmed an investment of $1 billion from Google and Fidelity for a reported 10% of the company. That leads to an evaluation of around $10 billion. (I may be old-fashioned, but I don't understand markets that evaluate WhatsApp at nearly double the value of SpaceX).
It also seems that SpaceX is considering the use of modulated laser beams to cope with OneWeb's advantage in spectrum holdings.
Regardless of the technology, OneWeb and SpaceX will have to deal with regulators in each nation they serve, which seems inefficient -- would it make more sense to establish some international regulatory rules?
Looking forward -- what if one of these companies pulls their plans off and ends up serving a billion or two billion customers -- should we worry about their power? It sounds like Comcast on steroids. Even if they both succeed and establish a duopoly, they will have immense power.
Update 1/26/2015
Business Week has published a background piece on Greg Wyler -- his biography and personality. It is interesting to read for general background, but has a few details that are new to me. He says he plans to orbit 648 satellites at an altitude of 750 miles and hopes to sell the user terminals for around $200. Since there will be several satellites within range of any point on Earth, he says their antennas will not need to be professionally installed or move to track satellites, as is the case with O3B.
The article is accompanied by a 4:33 video in which Wyler describes O3B and his plans for OneWeb -- here are a couple of stills from the video:
Wyler with a mock-up of a user terminal
Wyler illustrates the latency differences between
low, middle and geostationary orbits
Update 1/26/2015
Cell-phone video (25:53 min) of Elon Musk's talk at the closed-door announcement of the establishment of a satellite design office in Seattle. Many high-level details on the project.
Update 2/12/2015
Third time is closer, but still no cigar :-(. "Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather." — Elon Musk February 11, 2015
VIA SATELLITE: With industry verticals being served, and O3b connecting the other 3 billion people, where does OneWeb fit in to the communications landscape?
Wyler: O3b Networks does links around 150 Mbps and up, and this is about links that are much lower speeds than that. Our primary core competency will be sub 50 Mbps to small, inexpensive terminals.
VIA SATELLITE: How difficult was it to get investors like Virgin and QualComm to buy into this vision?
Wyler: Qualcomm knows more about communications chips, handover protocols and LTE then any other company. They also have a long background in satellite having built Globalstar and many other satellite communications systems. Virgin has Richard as the leader with a strong understanding of things that you can’t imagine he would have a sense of, and then this deep bench of players.
VIA SATELLITE: I understand an RFP is already out regarding the manufacturer of these satellites? When do you hope to finalize this?
Wyler: We are building satellites at high volume. They need to be done on a production line, rather than a one-off manufacturing process. We are going into a partnership where we will own a portion of the factory and the manufacturer the other portion.
VIA SATELLITE: Is 2017 a realistic timeframe to launch the first satellites? Wyler: I am an optimist. I think 2017 is a realistic time to have our test satellites up. I am not saying the constellation will be working then.
Update 3/18/2015
A third would-be satellite ISP, Leosat, has revealed plans for a constellation of Internet satellites. They will not be marketing to individual end users, but will target government and business -- maritime applications, oil and gas exploration and productions, telecom back-haul and trunking, enterprise VSAT, etc. They (and the others) hope to be able to provide low latency links over long distances. As shown here, a route from Los Angeles to southern Chile requires only 5 satellite hops as opposed to 14 terrestrial hops.
Update 10/7/2016
We have followed SpaceX's efforts to cut satellite launch cost by soft-landing and reusing rockets. Another way to cut launch costs is to use a single launch to place multiple satellites in different orbits and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully launched eight satellites into two different orbits. If rocket reuse and multiple-orbit launches become routine, the cost of creating constellations of Internet service satellites will be significantly reduced.
Single launch places eight satellites
in two different orbits.(credit: ISRO)
Update 11/17/2016
SpaceX has submitted a 102-page technical supplement to their application for permission to launch a constellation of Internet-service satellites.
SpaceX eventually plans to launch 4,000 communications satellites, which would be dozens of times larger than any other constellation, with the first phase of this possibly going online as early as 2018. SpaceX anticipates that the satellite business will become more profitable than the rocket business by 2020, generating tens of billions of dollars by the mid-2020s.
Another post on the same leak was more specific, saying that "SpaceX expects to generate more than $15 billion in profit by 2025."
Update 1/18/2017
Two of the updates to this post were triggered by SpaceX filing a request to launch 4,400 Internet service satellites last November and a leak of SpaceX financial data last week. Each of those events triggered in-depth, informative discussions on Reddit. The Reddit discussion of the request to launch the satellites (here) and the Reddit discussion of SpaceX finance (here) cover launch, radio and IP technology, markets, advantages and disadvantages compared to terrestrial networks and much more. Check them out and join the discussions.
Update 3/11/2017
A 2016 patent by Mark Krebs, then at Google, now at SpaceX, has several interesting figures like this one specifying two constellations, each at a different altitude. As shown here, the lower-altitude satellites have smaller footprints, but would have lower latency times than the higher altitude satellites.
The higher-orbit satellites will be launched in the first phase of the project, enabling SpaceX to bring the Internet to underserved and rural areas of the Earth. The second phase, lower-orbit satellites, will be able to offer faster service and possible compete with terrestrial networks in urban areas. I am not sure, but being at different altitudes might also simplify multi-satellite launches -- launch half at low altitude then proceded to the higher altitude and launch the second half. The high altitude satellites might also enable fewer hops on long, over-the horizon routes (as shown above) and make for smoother satellite handoffs during a session. The following is a neat video explainer of the SpaceX plan:
One of our grand challenges is to bring Internet connectivity to rural areas and developing nations and Google may be working toward that goal. They are experimenting with terrestrial and extra-terrestrial wireless technology. I will look at terrestrial wireless in a subsequent post -- this one focuses on extra-terrestrial technologies.
During the last couple decades, NGOs, governments and entrepreneurs have worked with four extra-terrestrial connectivity technologies:
(See pictures at the end of this post)
Let's look at Google's projects in this context.
High altitude platforms (HAPs) are blimps, drones or balloons that hover or circulate in the stratosphere. They have cloudless access to solar energy and being above the weather helps with control, but their signals must travel through rain and clouds. They are the lowest flying technology, so packet latency is relatively small, but so is their "footprint" -- the area their signal covers on the ground.
The most visible HAP Internet effort has been that of Sanswire, which has run well-publicized tests for over a decade. Sanswire has gone through bankruptcy, announced projects in Latin America that never materialized and faced complaints by suppliers and employees, but they are still working on Internet connectivity.
Most satellites -- like the Space Station and sensing satellites -- are in low Earth orbit (LEO). LEO satellites move relative to the ground, which means that either communication windows are intermittent or many satellites -- a "constellation" -- are needed to cover the planet.
The first LEO Internet project I know of was used for intermittent connectivity in Africa during the early 1990s. Shortly thereafter, a number of entrepreneurial LEO projects were announced. The most ambitious was Teledesic, which proposed Internet connectivity for the entire planet using a constellation of 288 satellites orbiting at 700 kilometers. Teledesic had high-profile backers like Bill Gates, Paul Allen and a Saudi prince, but the technology of the day was not up to the task and the company failed.
Today, the best-known LEO communication system is Iridium's satellite phone service, consisting of 66 LEO satellites. (Iridium was conceived by motorola as an Internet project, but was scaled back to telephony, went bankrupt and reemerged as a phone service).
This week, Google acquired Skybox Imaging, a company that has put a LEO satellite in a 600 kilometer orbit. The company was formed for data gathering, for example for providing real time video and images of traffic on roads, the sea and in the air, environmental monitoring, or map and earth imaging.
As we see in the following heat-map video from Skybox, satellite imaging proliferated rapidly between 1986 and 2012:
This sort of imagery has both economic and military value so it will provide Google both revenue and expertise in the short run. Might they be planning to parlay that into a constellation of Skybox communication satellites -- Teledesic II with modern technology -- in the long run?
Medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites are used for communication and navigation. Google recently announced a project with O3b Networks (other three billion). O3b currently has four satellites in 8,000 kilometer equatorial orbits and they plan to launch four more this year. They say those eight satellites will enable them to offer continuous service to all parts of the Earth within 45 degrees of the Equator.
The project with Google is headed by two O3b executives and they speak of spending billions dollars and putting at least 180 satellites in orbit. When they speak of 180 satellites, one wonders whether they are considering a LEO constellation.
(Update: Google's project with O3b Networks has ended, but O3b's MEO technology could still be deployed in Cuba and elsewhere).
Today's commercial satellite Internet connectivity is provided by geostationary satellites, which are positioned above the equator and remain stationary with respect to the surface of the earth since they orbit exactly once per day. Their orbit altitude enables multi-country footprints, but latency and launch costs are high.
Geostationary satellites have been used in rural areas and developing nations since the early days of the Internet, and the industry has remained viable as a result of technical progress in launch technology (public and private), antennas, solar power, radios and other electronics, as well as tuning of TCP/IP protocols to account for the 1/4 second latency due to the orbital altitude. (I've had surprisingly natural voice over IP conversations with people on geostationary satellite connections).
Have those technologies progressed to the point where HAPs and lower orbit satellites are now viable as well?
Since the beginning years of the Internet, NGOs, government agencies and entrepreneurs has been working on the Grand Challenge of connecting developing nations. They have not succeeded, but Google, with improved technology, deep pockets, a long-range viewpoint and economic motivation (ads) may be able to pull it off.
Finally, I cannot end this post without wondering whether Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Richard Brnason, founder of Virgin Galactic are eyeing those other three billion people.
A proposal for a low-earth-orbit satellite constellation like that attempted by Teledesic is being re-considered using modern launch and satellite technology. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk (launch technology) and Greg Wyler (satellite technology) are working on a constellation of 700 low-earth orbit satellites to provide Internet connectivity to rural areas and developing nations and Google has several related projects. Will they realize Teledesic's 1990 vision using 2020 technology?
In an earlier post, I proposed the use of conventional geostationary satellites in Cuba. If this effort by Musk and Tyler were to succeed, and the Cuban government would allow it, this would provide an even better interim connectivity solution. (Modern fiber infrastructure would remain as the ultimate goal, but satellites would provide an affordable interim step.)
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Update 1/27/2014
Well, the die is cast. Google has elected to back Elon Musk's satellite Internet project in competition with Greg Wyler. It's great to see two major teams competing to be ISPs to the Earth. If one or both succeed, the upside for humanity is clear, but is there a downside? It is a bit frightening to think of a global ISP with, say, a billion customers. What sort of regulation or oversight would be needed?
Elon Musk is announcing the opening of the SpaceX satellite engineering and development office in Seattle (video)
Teledesic animation showing a satellite
constellation that would cover the planet.
There has been significant technical progress in connectivity
to geostationary satellites since this picture was taken in India.
Figure from Arthur C. Clarke's article proposing
geostationary satellites for world wide radio coverage
Geostationary satellites have large footprints.
Titan Aerospace solar-poweed drone
O3b MEOs will cover the middle of the planet/
Does anyone know anything about this Google blimp? (Photoshopped?)
Our balloons today are doing pretty much everything a complete system needs to do. We're in discussions with telcos around the world, and we're going to fly over places like Indonesia for real service testing this year.
Astro Teller, head of Google X, gave a Ted Talk on the unexpected benefit of rewarding failure. Google X works on "moonshot" projects. They start with a radical idea then immediately begin trying to prove it is impossible by attacking what appears to be its weakest spot. If the weak spot cannot be overcome, they kill the project and reward the participants.
In this talk, Teller described several projects that had failed and some that had not yet failed. Project Loon, Google's balloon-based Internet access experiment has not failed so far. In fact, it has made significant progress.
Teller gave a status report on Project Loon, which is still very much alive, starting at 8 min 22 sec of the following full talk:
The transcript of his Project Loon report follows, but you should check out the video for the images.
8:22
Probably the craziest sounding project we have is Project Loon. We're trying to make balloon-powered Internet. A network of balloons in the stratosphere that beam an internet connection down to rural and remote areas of the world. This could bring online as many as four billion more people, who today have little or no internet connection.
8:46
But you can't just take a cell tower, strap it to a balloon and stick it in the sky. The winds are too strong, it would be blown away. And the balloons are too high up to tie it to the ground.
8:59
Here comes the crazy moment. What if, instead, we let the balloons drift and we taught them how to sail the winds to go where the needed to go? It turns out the stratosphere has winds that are going in quite different speeds and directions in thin strata. So we hoped that using smart algorithms and wind data from around the world, we could maneuver the balloons a bit, getting them to go up and down just a tiny bit in the stratosphere to grab those winds going in those different directions and speeds. The idea is to have enough balloons so as one balloon floats out of your area, there's another balloon ready to float into place, handing off the internet connection, just like your phone hands off between cell towers as you drive down the freeway.
9:52
We get how crazy that vision sounds -- there's the name of the project to remind us of that. So since 2012, the Loon team has prioritized the work that seems the most difficult and so the most likely to kill their project.
10:12
The first thing that they did was try to get a Wi-Fi connection from a balloon in the stratosphere down to an antenna on the ground. It worked. And I promise you there were bets that it wasn't going to. So we kept going.
10:27
Could we get the balloon to talk directly to handsets, so that we didn't need the antenna as an intermediary receiver? Yeah.
10:37
Could we get the balloon bandwidth high enough so it was a real Internet connection? So that people could have something more than just SMS? The early tests weren't even a megabit per second, but now we can do up to 15 megabits per second. Enough to watch a TED Talk.
10:58
Could we get the balloons to talk to each other through the sky so that we could reach our signal deeper into rural areas? Check.
11:08
Could we get balloons the size of a house to stay up for more than 100 days, while costing less than five percent of what traditional, long-life balloons have cost to make? Yes. In the end. But I promise you, you name it, we had to try it to get there. We made round, silvery balloons. We made giant pillow-shaped balloons. We made balloons the size of a blue whale. We busted a lot of balloons.
11:46
(Laughter)
11:48
Since one of the things that was most likely to kill the Loon project was whether we could guide the balloons through the sky, one of our most important experiments was putting a balloon inside a balloon.
12:01
So there are two compartments here, one with air and then one with helium. The balloon pumps air in to make itself heavier, or lets air out to make it lighter. And these weight changes allow it to rise or fall, and that simple movement of the balloon is its steering mechanism. It floats up or down, hoping to grab winds going in the speed and direction that it wants.
12:26
But is that good enough for it to navigate through the world? Barely at first, but better all the time.
12:35
This particular balloon, our latest balloon, can navigate a two-mile vertical stretch of sky and can sail itself to within 500 meters of where it wants to go from 20,000 kilometers away.
12:55
We have lots more to do in terms of fine-tuning the system and reducing costs. But last year, a balloon built inexpensively went around the world 19 times over 187 days. So we're going to keep going.
13:14
(Applause)
13:20
Our balloons today are doing pretty much everything a complete system needs to do. We're in discussions with telcos around the world, and we're going to fly over places like Indonesia for real service testing this year.
