Centre for Internet and Society

Public Debates on Differential Pricing

praskrishna — 2016-01-28T13:48:40Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/public-debates-on-differential-pricing

Public data on the Web leaves much to be desired

praskrishna — 2011-05-30T07:38:04Z

Making government data accessible to all is a vital challenge, says Deepa Kurup in her article published in the Hindu on May 28, 2011.

Tim Berners-Lee, chief architect and inventor of the World Wide Web and an ardent advocate of open data, said, earlier this year, that countries should be judged on their willingness to open up public data to their citizens. This, along with 'network neutrality', he considered as important as free speech, he had emphasised, adding that this was particularly critical for developing nations.

In January 2011, the British Government, led by Mr. Berners-Lee, launched www.data.gov.uk, a site aimed at creating a platform for disclosing data to citizens, civil society organisations and even private institutions from a wide range of government departments and processes.

In India, while ‘civic hackers' and non-governmental organisations are coming up with interesting initiatives that attempt to put government data in the form of mash-ups and easily readable content online, government data on the Web leaves much to be desired. Half a decade after the powerful and progressive Right to Information Act was implemented, accessing government data online is still a challenge. Given the huge amount of public information that has been generated this year through Census 2011, and some sections of these even being GIS mapped, it is imperative that government data be ‘set free', researchers say. They believe that this could not only aid governance and public planning but also increase citizen engagement in public processes.

Technology aid

A recent study by a research team at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research organisation, finds that despite challenges, the Government and bureaucrats in India are receptive to using technology to open up more data to the public. Speaking to policymakers across the country, the report records various impediments and accessibility barriers, and surveys existing open data initiatives in the Government.

Drawing from these, the report presents a set of recommendations to help the Government move towards an open data ecosystem. These include re-examining the end goals and the end users of this data, involving volunteers and citizens in putting out the data in accessible forms, and seeking support from pre-existing ‘open content' communities such as Wikipedia editors or open street mappers, to name a few.

For a start

Nishant Shah, researcher at CIS, says it is heartening to see that governments, and policymakers, are already thinking along the lines of open government data. There are several initiatives, such as the Bhoomi project or Nemmadi of the Karnataka Government, that may not look at themselves as open data initiatives, but are certainly going that way, Mr. Shah points out. There are several critical infrastructure changes that are happening such as the use of computers at different levels of governance, setting up of community Internet centres in villages and various e-governance programmes; so there is a lot of hope that data will be accessible to more people, he adds.

Challenges

However, Mr. Shah points out that while there is talk about taking government data into the public domain, the larger ecosystem for this has not been worked out. The report points out that there is insufficient standardisation, while e-governance, to a large degree, has been far from perfect. System interoperability issues and the larger issues of privacy (in the absence of any existing law) are both challenges.

Speaking to The Hindu, a senior official from the department of e-governance said it was indeed on the Government's agenda to open up more data, and offer it in more accessible formats. He pointed out that interoperability of formats is a huge problem, one that he hopes the recently enforced National Policy on Open Standards will accurately address.

"However, it is a gargantuan process to get departments across the country, at different levels of governance, to comply. This may take time and effort. Another problem is that the input formats are not standardised, which means a lot of vital data is being offered in cumbersome formats that are barely useable," he says. However, a bigger concern is to provide the information ecosystem to take this to the millions that are left out of the Internet loop. That is a greater challenge, he points out.

Read the original story published by the Hindu here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/public-data-on-web

PT:A2K - Workplace

praskrishna — 2014-11-09T08:39:50Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-a2k-workplace.pdf

PT Project - India Access to Knowledge through Music

praskrishna — 2014-11-18T01:56:28Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pt-project-access-to-knowledge-through-music.pdf

Proxy Wars on Internet

praskrishna — 2013-11-19T10:08:17Z

Proxy Wars on Internet

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Proxywars.png

Provide hacker details, outfit that claimed data leak told

praskrishna — 2017-06-07T12:14:13Z

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the regulatory authority for Aadhaar, has written to a Bengaluru-based research organisation, Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), seeking details about a suspected hack attack on government websites that led to the leak of information about 13 crore users.

The article by Mahendra Singh was published in the Times of India on May 18, 2017.

In a recent report, CIS had highlighted that websites run by various government departments, owing to a poor security framework, had publicly displayed sensitive personal financial information and Aadhaar numbers of beneficiaries of certainprojects.

In its letter, UIDAI argued that the data downloaded from one of the websites could not have been accessed unless the website was hacked. As hacking is a grave offence under the law, the UIDAI has asked CIS to provide details of the persons involved in the data theft.

According to a source, the UIDAI said that access to data on the website for the 'National Social Assistance Program' was only possible for someone in possession of authorised login details, or if the site (http://nsap.nic.in) was hacked or breached. The UIDAI said in its letter that such illegal access was against the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, and the IT Act, 2000, and that the persons involved had committed a grave offence.

Asking the CIS to reply before May 30, the UIDAI also said, "Aadhaar system is a protected system under Section 70 of the IT Act, 2000, the violation of which is punishable with rigorous imprisonment for a period up to 10 years." It added that the penalty clauses for violations are also provided in Section 36, Section 38 and Section 39 of the Aadhaar Act.

The UIDAI, however, maintained that even if the Aadhaar details were known to someone it did not pose a real threat to the people whose information was publicly available because the Aadhaar number could not be misused without biometrics.

The UIDAI letter said, "While, as your report suggests, there is a need to strengthen IT security of government websites, it is also important that the persons involved in hacking such sensitive information are brought to justice for which your assistance is required under the law."

"Your report mentions 13 crore people's data has been 'leaked'. Please specify how much of this data had been downloaded by you or are in your possession or in the possession of any other persons that you know. Please provide the details," the UIDAI added in its letter. The UIDAI also urged CIS to provide the details of the persons/organisations with whom it shared the data, if it did.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-mahendra-singh-may-18-2017-provide-hacker-details-outfit-that-claimed-data-leak-told

Protest@ censorship.com

praskrishna — 2012-06-05T04:23:19Z

Activism goes online as more angry young citizens decide to make their voices heard, writes Sandhya Soman in an article published in the Times of India. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in the article.

If there was a software code to ‘Invite All’, then Ashish D and friends would’ve called the world to land up at Gateway of India on June 9. The next best option for this netizen from Mumbai was to go online.

Hacktivism –– a form of activism for social change that uses computers and electronic networks –– is back. And the most recent protest is from hacker group Anonymous, which is trying to gather public support to stem internet censorship and blocking of websites in India by service providers and the government recently.

Since showing up in front of the town hall is not enough, Ashish has set up a Facebook page. Fellow netizens, irritated by the arbitrary blocking of sites and impressed by Anonymous OpIndia’s jabs at websites of political parties and corporates, are signing up to discuss the best possible venues to protest from.

Is there a better place than Marina beach in Chennai to make the maximum impact, wonders one user while another says it would be better to split up to cover more area in Mumbai. According to Pranesh Prakash, lawyer and programme manager at The Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research organisation, a strong online presence helps protests to get publicity. A lot of the Jan Lokpal agitation happened online, he says.

“It is not enough to fast at Jantar Mantar. If you get 1,000 people to click ‘like’ or 40 people to retweet your tweet, then the site becomes the default area of protest,” he says. If those petitioners are 10 influential people, then it carries more weight with the media than a few hundred shouting slogans on the street.

“Also called electronic civil disobedience, hacktivism is geared to political ends,” writes Pramod K Nayar in his book ‘An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures.’ Virtual sit-ins involving intellectuals and ordinary citizens and bombarding authorities with emails have been used by Mexican revolutionaries, Tamil separatists and protesters in Iran and the Middle East. “Hacktivism is clearly here to stay,” writes Nayar.

But it is not enough to collect a few digital signatures, says Nithin Manayath, one of the people behind the 2009 ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign, which sought to protest in an irreverent manner the attacks against women by the radical Sri Ram Sena. Manayath and his friends sustained the campaign through a Facebook group, which saw thousands of pairs of pink underwear being sent to the office of the group that attacked women for what it considered ‘violations of Indian culture’.

“Marches, candlelight vigils and dharnas are something we do regularly. By the tenth dharna you will be so jaded that you go to the protest venue to meet friends,” says Manayath. After a while, this happens to online petitions also if you are not thinking about what you are doing. “What I liked about the ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign was that we were responding to violence with a shameless act. It made me aware about many things and the novelty of the protest resonated with many people,” he says.

Though the current campaign is going the offline way on June 9, the hacking and denial of service attacks on websites by Anonymous have ensured that issue of blocking got publicity. “There is corporate and private censorship of internet and it is being done without enough proof of who is violating the copyrights of moviemakers. If these protests create awareness about the larger issues and developments in the areas of e-governance, IT Act and copyright law, then they could be helpful,” says Pranesh Prakash.

Meanwhile, Anonymous OpIndia, which is hoping for lifting of ban on websites, is already getting feelers from eager citizens on future issues. “Many people have requested us to protest other issues such gasoline price hike,” says a member. “And we always tell them that there are no strict rules, they can protest as per their needs.”

NET ANGST

Through Facebook, the ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign of 2009 encouraged women to send undergarments to Sri Ram Sena. The right-wing group had attacked women for ‘violations of Indian culture’

Jan Lokpal campaign in 2011 had support from various online forums. They sent petitions to political parties and inundated a government website with e-mails.

Following the blocking of websites due to a court order to prevent copyright violations.

Anonymous OpIndia targeted government and corporate websites. It is mobilising people for protests in nearly 11 cities on June 9.

Read the original here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/protest-at-censorship

Protection of Privacy in Mobile Phone Apps

praskrishna — 2016-12-15T14:17:20Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/protection-of-privacy-in-mobile-phones.pdf

Proposed Privacy Bill

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T11:46:49Z

A presentation by Naavi at the Privacy conference held in Mumbai.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/proposed-privacy-bill

Proposal Overview

praskrishna — 2019-04-15T08:03:30Z

Proposal Overview

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ProposalOverview.jpg

Proposal for Discussion

praskrishna — 2013-12-30T15:46:17Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/proposal-for-discussion.pdf

Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam'

praskrishna — 2016-05-06T15:35:14Z

Practical sessions on using Wiki Malayalam as a medium to preserve the language and promote digital media were held on Thursday, the final day of the two-day workshop on ‘Wiki Malayalam.’

The article was published by New Indian Express on May 6, 2016.

The event was organised jointly by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre in conjuction with Centre for Internet and Society and the Wiki Malayalam Fraternity. The sessions were promising, enriching and a big help for promoting online content through Wiki Malayalam which is still in its infancy, the participants said.

Rahimuddhim Sheik of Centre for Internet and Society, and Manoj Karangimadathil, Wikipedia Fraternity, led the sessions on Wiki technicals. It was followed by an interactive practical session wherein participants learned to be an editor and reporter in Wiki Malayalam. Participants were taught to create articles on sandbox through observation of articles published on Wikipedia.

Various aspects for making Wiki Malayalam presentable such as adding more images to the articles were imparted effectively.

Environmentalist Madhav Gadgil, speaking after inaugurating the two-day workshop,the other day, said, “Authenticity of the information in Wikipedia is often questioned but the discussion page offers the option to point out misleading information and to ensure true information and details.”

The introductory session by Madhav Gadgil incorporated various themes and ideas about the workshop, wikipedia commons, wikipedia projects, and its pillars and principles.

In his session he briefed about how wikipedia gives an in-depth information on particular material on a chronological order and various external references for further extensive reading. As an examples Madhav Gadgil discussed about the Athirapilly Hydroelectric Project in Wikipedia. It sets out a chance for anyone to start a new article on any subject.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-may-6-2016-promoting-online-content-through-wiki-malayalam

Prometheus bound and gagged

praskrishna — 2012-02-14T04:47:46Z

Funny how a healthy person like me can collapse one day and end up in the hospital. The doctor who made me go through every lab test available, finally diagnosed the cause after a chat with me. Apparently, I collapsed because I’m getting angry, increasing my blood pressure. The only solution he said is to stop reading newspapers, as I’m getting agitated by headlines like ‘India can go the China way and block sites’, or by how the government says there’s no Internet censorship while all it’s actions point the other way.

The article by Adarsh Matham was published in the New Indian Express on 20 January 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in this article.

Censorship is a word that is particularly abhorrent for someone like me, who grew up listening to tales of how people like Ramnath Goenka fought the censors during the Emergency. And to say that we’ll start blocking websites in India like China is doing, the most heart wrenching moment I’ve ever heard. While researching for this piece, I came across some information that is out in the open on the Internet, but which is not generating the level of debate it deserves. We seem to be immersed in discussing Kolaveri, while slowly sliding into an Orwellian nightmare. As an example, I didn’t know there are rules called ‘Intermediary Guidelines’ and ‘Cyber cafe rules’, and I bet you didn’t either. As Pranesh Prakash of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has pointed out in a blog post, these two rules alone, made up by the Department of IT in April 2011, give the government and citizens of India great powers at censoring the web by allowing them to get Internet firms to remove content that is ‘disparaging’, ‘doesn’t have rights to’, etc.

Killing freedom of speech is only the first crime of these rules as proved by the good people at CIS. To test these rules, they complained against some frivolous content to ISPs and Internet companies, which resulted in six out of seven listings being removed without informing posters or users. More alarmingly, of the 358 items the Government of India (and some states) has requested Google to remove, only eight were for hate speech, one for national security, and an astounding 255 for ‘government criticism’.

Since introducing these draconian rules, the tale only gets murkier. Not content with asking Internet firms to self-regulate, Kapil Sibal has introduced an amendment to the Copyright Act, which introduces section 52(1)(C ), that allows anyone to send a notice complaining about infringement of his copyright. While this sounds normal, the catch is that ‘the Internet company has to remove the content immediately without question, even if the notice is false or malicious’. This amendment is before Rajya Sabha, and considering how our Parliament passes bills without a debate, it’ll become a law very soon.

Baleful rules and people behind them fail to realise that such efforts will lead to the Streisand effect, whereby attempts to hide any information will lead to it being publicised more widely. Yes more widely, because you can take out some content, but India’s youth will re-post it in a million places within minutes, like they do with pirated movies. We play a lot of cunning games just to live peacefully in India already. Please don’t let us play them online too.

The writer is a tech geek.
Email: articles@theadarsh.net

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/prometheus-bound-and-gagged

Project Tiger: Wikipedia ropes in locals to contribute articles in Indian languages

praskrishna — 2019-06-05T06:37:55Z

The project has generated content in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odiya and Gujarati.

The article by Tushar Kaushik was published in Economic Times on May 29, 2019.

Hundreds of people from across the country are generating online content in local Indian languages and are even competing in ‘editathons’ that pit contributors of different languages against each other.

While online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s content might be exhaustive in English, its content in Indian languages is limited. Keeping this in mind, Wikipedia’s parent organization Wikimedia Foundation, and Google, roped in Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) - Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Wikimedia India Chapter in 2017 and started ‘Project Tiger’ aimed at generating more content in Indian languages. A pilot project was held from December 2017 to May 2018 and another phase of the competition is set to begin next month. The project has generated content in major languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odia and Gujarati.

The contributors are from varied age groups, some are also from remote, rural areas and they worked from different cities across the country. Two years ago, Durga Prasanna, a journalism student at Alva’s college in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, joined a group of contributors to Wikipedia as part of a requirement from the college. She got an opportunity to participate in ‘Project Tiger’ last year. She generated Wikipedia entries in Kannada and also in the regional languages of Tulu and Konkani. Apart from Durga, seven other students of her college together contributed over 70 articles in Kannada, and a few in Tulu and Konkani, during the ‘editathon’. “We were provided a long list of topics on which not much literature existed in the local languages and among them, we chose topics based on our interests. For example, I wrote articles on ‘psychologist’ and ‘medicinal plants’,” she said.

Another participant, Charan Gill, a 65-year-old former social worker from Patiala, Punjab, was the top contributor in Punjabi. “I wrote 432 articles in a span of two-and-a-half months.However, contributing is not new to me as I have written over 10,000 Wikipedia entries in Punjabi since 2012,” he says.

Gill now works with another Wikimedia project, translating literary classics into Punjabi. He is currently translating some works of 19th century Russian author Ivan Turgenev. Thanksto Gill’s contributions, the Punjabi community of contributors won the prize for producing the most articles — 1,320. In Tamil, 1,241 articles were contributed. A total of 78 articleswere produced in Kannada by eight members.

Gopalakrishna A, community advocate for Kannada language, CIS-A2K, said all written articles were evaluated by a Wikimedia team jury to check if they fulfilled all criteria beforebeing uploaded on Wikipedia set for the contest. Once they fulfil the criteria, the articles are eligible for the prizes. “The main idea was to create content in Indian languages. Thethings most Indian contributors required were internet and hardware support. So participants who had made significant contributions prior to the competition Wikimediaprojects were provided internet connections or laptops Chromebooks,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-may-29-2019-tushar-kaushik-project-tiger

Project Loon

praskrishna — 2015-03-09T16:17:41Z

Billions of people could get online for the first time thanks to helium balloons that Google will soon send over many places cell towers don’t reach.

The article published in MIT Technology Review quotes Sunil Abraham.

You climb 170 steps up a series of dusty wooden ladders to reach the top of Hangar Two at Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, California. The vast, dimly lit shed was built in 1942 to house airships during a war that saw the U.S. grow into a technological superpower. A perch high in the rafters is the best way to appreciate the strangeness of something in the works at Google—a part of the latest incarnation of American technical dominance.

On the floor far below are Google employees who look tiny as they tend to a pair of balloons, 15 meters across, that resemble giant white pumpkins. Google has launched hundreds of these balloons into the sky, lofted by helium. At this moment, a couple of dozen float over the Southern Hemisphere at an altitude of around 20 kilometers, in the rarely visited stratosphere—nearly twice the height of commercial airplanes. Each balloon supports a boxy gondola stuffed with solar-powered electronics. They make a radio link to a telecommunications network on the ground and beam down high-speed cellular Internet coverage to smartphones and other devices. It’s known as Project Loon, a name chosen for its association with both flight and insanity.

Google says these balloons can deliver widespread economic and social benefits by bringing Internet access to the 60 percent of the world’s people who don’t have it. Many of those 4.3 billion people live in rural places where telecommunications companies haven’t found it worthwhile to build cell towers or other infrastructure. After working for three years and flying balloons for more than three million kilometers, Google says Loon balloons are almost ready to step in.

It is odd for a large public company to build out infrastructure aimed at helping the world’s poorest people. But in addition to Google’s professed desires to help the world, the economics of ad-supported Web businesses give the company other reasons to think big. It’s hard to find new customers in Internet markets such as the United States. Getting billions more people online would provide a valuable new supply of eyeballs and personal data for ad targeting. That’s one reason Project Loon will have competition: in 2014 Facebook bought a company that makes solar-powered drones so it can start its own airborne Internet project.

Google’s planet-scale social-engineering project is much further along. In tests with major cellular carriers, the balloons have provided high-speed connections to people in isolated parts of Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. Mike Cassidy, Project Loon’s leader, says the technology is now sufficiently cheap and reliable for Google to start planning how to roll it out. By the end of 2015, he wants to have enough balloons in the air to test nearly continuous service in several parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Commercial deployment would follow: Google expects cellular providers to rent access to the balloons to expand their networks. Then the number of people in the world who still lack Internet access should start to shrink, fast.

Balloon revolution

“HARMLESS SCIENCE EXPERIMENT.” That’s what was written on the boxes carried by the balloons that the secretive Google X lab began to launch over California’s Central Valley in 2012, along with a phone number and the promise of a reward for safe return. Inside the boxes was a modified office Wi-Fi router. The balloons were made by two seamsters hired from the fashion industry, from supplies bought at hardware stores.

Project Loon is now much less like a science project. In 2013, Google began working with a balloon manufacturer, Raven Aerostar, which expanded a factory and opened another to make the inflatable “envelope” for the balloons. That June, Google revealed the existence of the project and described its first small-scale field trials, in which Loon balloons provided Internet service to people in a rural area of New Zealand. In 2014, Project Loon focused on turning a functional but unwieldy prototype into technology that’s ready to expand the world’s communication networks.

Loon’s leaders planned to buy their own space on the radio spectrum so their balloons could operate independently of existing wireless networks. But Google CEO Larry Page nixed that idea and said the balloons should instead be leased to wireless carriers, who could use the chunks of the airwaves they already own and put up ground antennas to link the balloons into their networks. That saved Google from spending billions on spectrum licenses and turned potential competitors into allies. “Nearly every telco we talk to wants to do it,” says Cassidy.

Project Loon aims to change the economics of Internet access

Google has also made major improvements to its stratospheric craft. One of the most significant was developing a way to accurately pilot balloons across thousands of miles without any form of propulsion. The stratosphere, which typically is used only by weather balloons and spy planes, is safely above clouds, storms, and commercial flights. But it has strong winds, sometimes exceeding 300 kilometers per hour. Providing reliable wireless service means being able to guarantee that there will always be a balloon within 40 kilometers.

Google solved that aviation problem by turning it into a computer problem. Winds blow in different directions and at different speeds in different layers of the stratosphere. Loon balloons exploit that by changing altitude. As a smaller balloon inside the main one inflates or deflates, they can rise or fall to seek out the winds that will send them where Google wants them to go. It’s all directed by software in a Google data center that incorporates wind forecasts from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into a simulation of stratospheric airflow. “The idea is to find a way through the maze of the winds,” says Johan Mathe, a software engineer working on Loon’s navigation system. A fleet of balloons can be coördinated that way to ensure there is always one over any particular area.

The first version of this system sent new commands to Loon balloons once a day. It could find a way for a balloon launched over New Zealand, for example, to dawdle over land until prevailing winds pushed it east and over the Pacific Ocean. Then it would have the balloon ride the fastest winds possible for the 9,000-kilometer trip east to Chile. But that system could only get balloons within hundreds of kilometers of their intended target. For tests of Internet service in New Zealand and elsewhere, the company had to cheat, launching Loon balloons nearby to make sure they would be overhead. In late 2014, Google upgraded its balloon navigation system to give balloons fresh orders as frequently as every 15 minutes. They can now be steered with impressive accuracy over intercontinental distances. In early 2015, a balloon traveled 10,000 kilometers and got within 500 meters of its desired cell tower.

Google has also had to figure out how to make the balloons sturdier, so they can spend more time in the stratosphere. The longer they stay up, the lower the cost of operating the network. However, weight considerations mean a balloon’s envelope must be delicate. Made from polyethylene plastic with the feel of a heavy-weight trash bag, the material is easily pierced with a fingertip, and a stray grain of grit in the factory can make a pinprick-size hole that will bring a balloon back to earth after less than two weeks.

Preventing those leaks is the work of a squad inside Project Loon that has doggedly chased down every possible cause and come up with preventive measures. These researchers have studied balloons retrieved from the stratosphere, pored over video footage of others inflated to bursting on the ground, and developed a “leak sniffer” to find tiny holes by detecting helium. The leak squad’s findings have led to changes in the design of the balloon envelope, fluffier socks for factory workers who must step on the envelopes during production, and new machines to automate some manufacturing steps. Altogether, Google has introduced the first major changes the balloon industry has seen in decades, says Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who oversees manufacturing for Project Loon and previously worked on Apple’s manufacturing operations. Those changes have paid off. In the summer of 2013, Loon balloons lasted only eight days before having to be brought down, says Krishnaswamy. Today balloons last on average over 100 days, with most exceeding that time in flight; a handful last as long as 130 days.

Google has also made many improvements to the design of the Loon balloons’ payloads and electronics. But it still has problems left to solve. For example, Google needs to perfect a way of making radio or laser connections between balloons, so that they can pass data along in an aerial chain to connect areas far from any ground station.

But Cassidy says Project Loon’s technology is already at a point where stratospheric Internet service can be tested at a global scale. In 2015 he aims to evaluate “quasi-continuous” service along a thin ribbon around the Southern Hemisphere. That ribbon is mostly ocean, but it will require a fleet of more than 100 Loon balloons circling the globe, says Cassidy. “Maybe 90 percent of the time,” he says, “people in that ring will have at least one balloon overhead and be able to use it.”

Good signals

“It was just for some minutes, but it was wonderful,” says Silvana Pereira, a school principal in a rural area of northeastern Brazil. She’s thinking back to an unusual geography class last summer in which pupils at Linoca Gayoso Castelo Branco School could use the Internet thanks to a Loon balloon drifting, invisibly, high overhead. Internet service is nonexistent in the area, but that day’s lesson on Portugal was enhanced by Wikipedia and online maps. “They were so involved that the 45 minutes of a regular class wouldn’t be enough to satisfy their demand for knowledge,” says Pereira.

Her school is only around 100 kilometers from a metro area of more than one million people, but its location is too poor and sparsely populated for Brazil’s wireless carriers to invest in Internet infrastructure. Google’s goal is for Project Loon to change those economics. It should be possible to operate one Loon balloon for just hundreds of dollars per day, Cassidy says, and each one should be able to serve a few thousand connections at any time. The company won’t reveal how much it is spending to set all this up, or even how many people work on the project.

Cassidy is also confident that his balloons will be able to hold their own against Internet delivered by drones (both Google and Facebook are working on that) or satellites (an idea being pursued by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk). Those projects are less far along than Loon, and it’s expensive to build and power drones or launch satellites. “For quite some time, balloons will have a big cost advantage,” Cassidy says. Nevertheless, Google might be hedging its bets with more than just drones: in January it invested $900 million in SpaceX.

Technology is not the only thing keeping 4.3 billion people offline, though. For example, policies in India mandate that telecom companies provide coverage to poor as well as rich areas, but the government hasn’t enforced the rules, says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a think tank in Bangalore. He is also wary of Project Loon because of the way Google and other Western Internet companies have operated in developing countries in recent years. They have cut deals with telecoms in India and other countries to make it free to access their websites, disadvantaging local competitors. “Anyone coming with deep pockets and new technology I would welcome,” he says, but he adds that governments should fix up their patchy regulatory regimes first to ensure that everyone—not just Google and its partners—really does benefit.

Those working on Project Loon are confident the public good will be served. They seem as motivated by a desire to make people’s lives better as by Loon’s outlandish technology. Cassidy’s voice wavers with emotion when he thinks back to seeing the delight of Pereira’s pupils during their Internet-enabled geography lesson. “This is a way of changing the world,” he says.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/mit-technology-review-february-18-2015-project-loon