Puerto Rico’s damaged infrastructure has caught the attention of Google, Tesla and other firms that are pitching ideas such as cellular-signal-relaying balloons and off-grid power distribution.
A temporary, floating mobile cell relay system, dubbed Project Loon, is in development by the research-and-development arm of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. “The first balloons lasted a day and a half, two days in the air … but we got them up to 100 days through testing,” says Mahesh Krishnaswamy, head of Project Loon manufacturing, in a press statement. The solar-powered balloons reach altitudes of 65,000 ft and can transmit and receive LTE signals to and from users’ cell phones.