Source: twitter.com/mattwi1s0n/flickr
Google’s months-long pitch to several Asian countries regarding its Project Loon internet program sparked global interest in where the internet giant is aiming to bring its web balloons next. Now, as anticipated, it looks like Google has settled upon India.
Reports on Monday detail how Google is looking to partner with an Indian telco in order to extend its Project Loon balloons across certain regions, in order to service internet to large swaths of people. The Economic Times quotes Rajan Anandan, the managing director for Google South East Asia and India as saying that Google and the Indian government have been working together, and that the company is talking to a number of telcos to try to establish its “infrastructure in the sky.”
Google has been running tests for some time, during which Project Loon has gone from a lofty, almost hairbrained-sounding idea to a fleshed-out, applicable service.
But the track record of U.S. tech giants seeking to disseminate internet access in India is shaky — the last attempt from Facebook has all but crashed and burned. Indeed, India outright rejected Free Basics, Facebook’s version of free internet as part of its Internet.org project. In early February, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India announced that it had prohibited a practice known as zero-rating, or the offering of select applications or internet services at no cost. (Free Basics is a zero-rated service.)
But while the outrage around Free Basics has largely to do with net neutrality — many in India see Free Basics as a curated version of the internet — Google’s internet will be filter-less. Stay tuned to see how broadly India adopts Project Loon.
