The FCC has given Google permission to deploy its Project
Loon balloons over Puerto Rico.
Previously, the helium balloons were able to provide LTE
coverage to Peru after extreme flooding. But in that case,
Google had already partnered with a telecom provider on
the ground, which it depended on to beam the signal to the
balloons, for disaster relief.
In Puerto Rico, Google's innovation lab, X, is starting from
scratch. It's unclear if Puerto Rico's stressed telecom
companies even have the resources to partner with Google
on this endeavor.
But it's worth a try if there's any chance it can help the
island's 3.5 million people connect with friends and loved
ones. Puerto Rico's infrastructure was demolished by
Hurricane Maria. Less than 25 percent of its cellphone
towers are back online, and power has only been restored
to about 10 percent of the island, according to a site run by
the Puerto Rican government.
The FCC announcement came from Matthew Berry, chief of
staff to the agency's chairman, Ajit Pai, on Twitter.
Mashable reached out to Google for more details, and will
update this story if the company responds.
Project Loon works by relaying a signal beamed from a
telecom partner on the ground through its network of
balloons floating around 65,000 feet in the air, and then
sending that signal down to people with cellphones. In Peru,
the project's leader said 160 GB of data was sent over an
area roughly the size of Sweden, which was "enough data to
send and receive around 30 million WhatsApp messages, or
2 million emails."

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