Aerostats emerge in US for rural broadband delivery
Boston-based startup Altaeros is teaming with Ericsson to deliver high-speed wireless communication to traditionally hard-to-reach regions in the American countryside.
The innovation they are using, known as the SuperTower, might be of interest for Ireland’s long-awaited national broadband plan.
The SuperTower is a “aerostat” tied by cable to the ground, which looks like one of the advertisment balloon blimps which farmers see at events such as the Ploughing Championships.
In sparsely populated regions of the US, mobile phone service providers have been slow to invest in the large, expensive communication towers used in urban areas. Estimates indicate that serving the rural US population with mobile signals and broadband from towers could cost as much as $12.5bn (€101.bn).
For most providers, it’s not worth the investment, because the sparse rural population cannot support it.
But a cheaper solution has emerged — the aerostat technology used for years by military and commercial entities to gather intelligence, to conduct surveillance, and to leverage telecommunications.
These “SuperTowers” can be up to eight times higher than traditional communication towers, enabling their signals to reach great distances to spread-out rural populations.
Costing as much as 70% less than traditional towers to implement, they have been successfully tested tests in rural Maine in the northeast US, bringing streaming video at broadband speeds to local residents, for example, using Ericsson’s innovative radio technology. Altaeros was founded in 2010 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop aerostats for the telecom and renewable energy sectors.
