A dial tone in the sky
BISMARCK, N.D. — Why put up costly cell phone towers in thinly populated areas, when a few balloons would do?
In North Dakota, former Gov. Ed Schafer is backing a plan to loft wireless network repeaters on balloons high above the state to fill gaps in cellular coverage.
“I know it sounds crazy,” said Schafer, who now heads Extend America Inc., a wireless telecommunications company. “But it works in the lab.”
Extend America and Chandler, Ariz.-based Space Data Corp. are developing the technology, which is believed to be the first to use disposable balloons to provide cellular coverage.
A trial balloon will be launched in the next few weeks to test the idea, said Schafer, who left office in 2000 after eight years as governor.
“To cover every square mile of North Dakota, it would take 1,100 cell towers,” Schafer said. “We can do the whole state with three balloons.”
If successful, the hydrogen-filled balloons could be drifting across the stratosphere above North Dakota this summer, providing cellular coverage at a tiny fraction of the cost of building cellular towers.
Jerry Knoblach, the CEO of Space Data, says that although the balloon technology, called SkySite, is new to the cellular industry, “the platform is very well proven” for other purposes.
His company has launched thousands of the free-floating balloons in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico over the past year. The wireless data network they encompass tracks oil company vehicles and monitors the production of oil wells and pipelines, he said.
Knoblach is certain the balloons will work for cellular service in North Dakota — even in cold or stormy weather. He said balloons were launched even during Hurricane Katrina.
Up to 20 miles above the earth, well above commercial airliner pathways, steady stratospheric winds would push the latex balloons across the state at about 30 mph. Each balloon would deliver voice and data service to an area hundreds of miles in diameter.
“Nine balloons would always be in the air, with some going up, some going down, and some in the middle,” Schafer said.
The balloons swell from six feet in diameter to 30 feet after they gain altitude. Once a balloon leaves the state, its toaster-size communications pod would jettison, deploy a parachute and fall to earth, where it would signal its position.
“We’d pay some guy a bounty, put in a new battery pack and send it off again,” Knoblach said. Schafer said the repeater could be used indefinitely “unless it lands in a lake or gets run over by a truck.”
“The nice thing is that we don’t have to weld a bunch of steel together to build a tower,” Schafer said. “We just let these babies go.”