Government gives in principle nod to pilot Google’s Project Loon

NEW DELHI: In his first visit to the country, Google’s newly-appointed chief Sundar Pichai managed to secure support for the company’s ambitious Loon project in the government. Union minister for telecom and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government was in principle agreeable to pilots of Google’s Project Loon.

After meeting Pichai in New Delhi on Wednesday, Prasad said he had also proposed a partnership with state run BSNL for Project Loon. Under the project Loon, Google has proposed to provide internet connectivity in hard to access areas of the country from balloons floating at a height of 20 km using LTE or 4G technology.

ET had reported earlier the project has run into some rough weather in the country, with at least three central ministries — defence, home and civil aviation — and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) having raised technical and security concerns over the project. One of the primary concerns with the proposal is that the spectrum band required for the transmission — a band between 700 to 900 MHz — is occupied by telecom service providers and is currently unavailable. The other concerns are related to security.

Prasad also said that the telecom ministry would help Google in obtaining clearances from civil aviation and the defence ministries for approvals. Earlier in the day, Pichai said that Google has been testing Loon in other countries such as Indonesia. “We always work with (telecom) carriers, we have tonnes of data to show that it doesn’t cause interference.”

Marian Croak, vice-president of Access Strategy & Emerging Markets added that one of the biggest concerns around the project has to do with impedance, whether or not it will interfere with spectrum.

“That’s a discussion we’ve had with telcos around the world and we believe we have an answer to that around spectrum sharing and that we’ve solved that issue, in terms of sharing spectrum so that it doesn’t create impedance,” Croak said.

Google had announced a project to connect 400 Railway stations in the country through Wi-Fi along with Indian Railways technology arm RailTel. Pichai said that the project is on track and the first 100 stations will be connected by the end of 2016.

A pilot project at the Mumbai Central Station is set to go live by January 2016. Google has tied up with the Tata Trusts for an initiative, “Internet Saathi”, which helps women get online by providing 1,000 bicycles equipped with internet devices. Pichai hopes to scale the programme which is in operation in 1,000 villages to 3 lakh villages.

Prasad has also asked Pichai to partner with rural BPOs under the Project Sarathi.