In the quest to provide internet access to remote areas all over the world, Google’s Project Loon is getting kickstarted and guess where? In Sri Lanka.
In a joint effort of a company called Rama, headed by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya together with the support of Sri Lankan government, the parties are pushing for the accomplishment of this Balloon experiment in hopes that Sri Lanka will turn into a huge viable wifi zone about the size of West Virginia. Rama has future plans of commercializing the Loon launches after it will be successful and established.
Palihapitiya, a former google employee turned successful VC, still having connections, agreed to partner with Google investing in undersea internet cables and encouraging startups in breeding more innovations that will set the standards for the rest of its neighboring Asian countries who is also struggling in terms of bandwidth and internet speed. Google also plans testing the balloons in Indonesia and India.
That is to say the Sri Lankan government is more than eager to adapt and evolve together with the growing demands of technology. Developing nations especially in Asia are still struggling with the average internet speed distributed to its customers. In Sri Lanka the AVS (average internet speed) is 5.1 mbps, India has 2.5 mbps, China 3.7 mbps which is not even half of what is being distributed to US which is 11.7 mbps, and Singapore who has 12.5 mbps or Hong Kong with 15.8 mbps
