The Telegraph reports on (or, at least, repeats Wired‘s reporting on) the dirigibles spreading the World Wide Web to places no internet has gone before:
“To help enable the campaign, Google has been putting together an ecosystem of low-cost smartphones running Android on low-power microprocessors,” Wired said. “Rather than traditional infrastructure, Google’s signal will be carried by high-altitude platforms – balloons and blimps – that can transmit to areas of hundreds of square kilometres.”
Google has a growing track record of installing its own networks; in 2010 it experimented with broadcasting data signals in the spaces unused by TV networks, and it has since expanded that programme to Africa. The company is also installing its own superfast fibre broadband network in the Midwest, called Google Fiber.