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January 23, 2006
Up, up, and away
It sounds crazy, but it just might work. From IN-FORUM (Fargo, ND--free registration required):
BISMARCK – Why put up more than 1,000 towers to spread cell phone service across North Dakota when a few balloons would do it?
So says former Gov. Ed Schafer, one of the backers of a plan to attach wireless re-peaters to weather balloons high above the state to fill gaps in cellular coverage.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Schafer said, “but it works in the lab.”
Extend America, a North Dakota wireless telecommunications company, and Chandler, Ariz.-based Space Data Corp. are developing the balloon-borne cellular technology, believed to be the first of its kind.
A trial balloon will be launched next month in North Dakota to test the theory, said Schafer, the chief executive officer of Bismarck-based Extend America. Schafer left office in 2000 after eight years as governor.
...
Jerry Knoblach, the CEO of Space Data, said although the balloon technology called SkySite is new to cellular, “the platform is very well proven.”
His company has launched thousands of the free-floating balloons in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico to track data for oil company vehicles, wells and pipelines over the past year, he said. And Knoblach is certain the balloons will work for cellular service in North Dakota – even in cold or stormy weather. He said balloons were launched even during Hurricane Katrina.
“It’s just like a weather balloon at the airport,” Schafer said. “There’s enough hydrogen in them to rise very rapidly.”
Up to 20 miles above the Earth, stratospheric winds would push the latex weather balloons across the state at about 30 mph. Each balloon would deliver voice and data service to an area hundreds of miles in diameter, Schafer said.
“Nine balloons would always be in the air, with some going up, some going down, and some in the middle,” Schafer said.
Once the balloons transit the state’s stratosphere, the electronic gear would be jettisoned remotely and fall to the earth with a parachute.
The electronic equipment, about the size of a toaster, would be recovered through the use of a global positioning satellite device.
“We’d pay some guy a bounty, put in a new battery pack and send it off again,” Knoblach said.
Schafer said a repeater could be used indefinitely “unless it lands in a lake or gets run over by a truck.”
Unless it drifts over the border into Minnesota, landing in a lake should not be a problem. By now you're probably wondering about the cost,
Knoblach said the hydrogen-filled balloons cost about $55 each. The balloons swell from six feet in diameter to 30 feet after they gain altitude. After the electronic equipment is released, the balloons expand with the drop in air pressure until they burst.
Winds at high altitudes are consistent, blowing west to east in the winter, and east to west in the summer, Knoblach said. The balloons would travel above the jet stream, and he said they would not be bothered by storms.
Schafer said it costs about $250,000 to build one cellular tower in North Dakota, and many remote areas don’t have enough customers to pay for it.
“To cover every square mile of North Dakota, it would take 1,100 cell towers,” Schafer said. “We can do the whole state with three balloons – and it won’t have problems with that line-of-sight stuff,” he said, referring to hills that can block signals from towers.
Sure sounds interesting. I'll keep my eyes open to see if they have a follow up on the "trial balloon". If their cost estimates are correct and it works technically then this could really take off. I guess my main technical question would be about reliability of the service. Do they expect that they could achieve "five 9's"? (99.999% uptime) That would probably be the make-or-break for the technology. Whatever the case, I give them credit for creativity. As an economist, I'm particularly intrigued by the attempt to overcome the barrier of high fixed costs of building a network with low customer density.
Posted by William Polley at January 23, 2006 01:29 AM
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