Alphabet is sending 'internet balloons' to Puerto Rico

Balloon in Puerto Rico.
(Image credit: Project Loon/Google)

Alphabet's ambitious X lab looked skyward to help the recovery process in Puerto Rico, sending "internet balloons" to the battered island territory over the weekend. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico over a month ago, and Alphabet, Google's parent company, sought to use high-flying technology to help, NBC News reports.

The FCC reported Monday that at least 66 percent of cellular sites in Puerto Rico were still out of service as a result of Hurricane Maria. X's balloons, known as Project Loon, aimed to increase internet access in areas affected by outages. With the approval of several governmental organizations including the FCC and FAA, X deployed the "internet balloons," which carry the technology necessary to provide basic internet access for LTE-enabled phones. The balloons can hover over a specified area using machine learning-powered algorithms, the lab wrote.

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Elianna Spitzer

Elianna Spitzer is a rising junior at Brandeis University, majoring in Politics and American Studies. She is also a news editor and writer at The Brandeis Hoot. When she is not covering campus news, Elianna can be found arguing legal cases with her mock trial team.q