Alphabet bursts Kenya's balloon with shut down of Loon, its internet company

 

Google’s parent firm, Alphabet, has killed the idea of using balloons to beam high-speed internet in remote parts of the world.

This is after it announced that it would be shutting down Loon, the nearly decade-old company that launched its first commercial internet service in Kenya in July 2018.

The tech giant cited the project's lack of commercial viability for the move.

“While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business,” Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth said in a blog post yesterday.

“The road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped,” Astro Teller, who leads X - the research and development facility founded by Google - also said in a blog. 

“In the coming months, we’ll begin winding down operations and it will no longer be an Other Bet within Alphabet.”

Telkom Kenya, in collaboration with Aphabet, had in July last year launched a network of 4G internet balloons, making Kenya the first country in the world to commercially test the viability of the innovation in taking internet to rural communities.

At the time, ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru said the project would transform rural economies by helping bridge the huge internet access gap in the country.