10 counties to initially benefit from Telkom, Loon deployment from July

Telkom and Loon will progressively deploy loon technology to provide mobile internet to Kenyans starting July 2020.

The service will initially cover a region spanning nearly 50,000 sq.km., including the areas of Iten, Eldoret, Baringo, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Bomet, Kericho, and Narok.

In addition, with the Loon technology being a solar-powered solution, customers will get to experience mobile Internet service availability from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm.

In one field testing session in late June, Loon and Telkom registered an uplink speed of 4.74 Mbps, a downlink speed of 18.9 Mbps, and latency of 19 milliseconds (ms).

In this and subsequent testing, the service was used for applications such as email, web browsing, data calls e.g via WhatsApp, video calls, and YouTube.

Even with Loon’s advanced machine learning algorithms that work to keep the balloons up, there are times when certain impediments such as wind patterns and restricted airspaces, could result in intermittent service availability.

Loon and Telkom are working together to limit any potential service disruptions and improve the user’s experience.

As Loon gains more experience flying in Kenya, and dispatches more balloons to the service region, it is expected that service consistency will increase.

Telkom Kenya’s Chief Executive Officer, Mugo Kibati, states: “This is an exciting milestone for Internet service provision in Africa and the world, more so that the service will pioneer in Kenya. This new technology will also complement Telkom’s ongoing strategy to further widen our network coverage, enabling us to realise our brand promise; to be Kenya’s preferred data network.”

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of this crisis has made online education, and other crucial interventions to the country such as Telemedicine as well as digitised and automated platforms to enable the consumer still access service, the new normal.

Loon’s Chief Executive Officer, Alastair Westgarth, states: “We could not be more excited to launch service in Kenya. This is the culmination of years of work and collaboration between Loon, Telkom, and the government. Without the support and engagement by various government agencies, today would not be possible. We are incredibly grateful to the many governmental stakeholders who helped usher in Africa’s first application of this innovative technology.”

To provide service in Kenya, Loon and Telkom are utilising a fleet of around 35 or more separate balloons that are in constant motion in the stratosphere above eastern Africa.

Balloons are launched from locations in the United States and navigate to Kenya using wind currents in the stratosphere.

As Loon gains more experience flying in Kenya and dispatches more balloons to the service region, it is expected that service consistency will increase.