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Briefing
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- FCC Deployment Approval – U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Google license to send Project Loon balloons to Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, providing emergency LTE cellular coverage to areas affected by Hurricane Maria
- Telecom Partnership – Working with telecom companies AT&T and T-Mobile which will provide network necessary to deliver signal to people’s devices
- How It Works – Balloon network floating at altitude of 65,000 feet receive signals from telecom network on ground, which then gets sent to cellphone users
- Puerto Rico’s Need – More than 75% of cellphone towers in Puerto Rico remain offline, with power yet to be restored to almost 90% of island
- Previous Loon Project – Worked with telecom partner Telefonica to provide Internet connectivity to tens of thousands of people in Lima, Chimbote, and Piura floodzones in Peru on May 2017
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Accelerator
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Sector
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Information Technology, Telecommunications
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Organization
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AT&T Inc., Alphabet Inc., Google Inc., T-Mobile, Telefónica SA
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Source
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Original Publication Date
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October 8, 2017
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