The government has asked Google to submit a fresh proposal for Project Loon since its earlier one has been rejected. This news comes just over 2 weeks after some progress had been made to begin the testing phase of the initiative in India.
Addressing the Lok Sabha, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Project Loon proposal had been dismissed after discussion with stakeholders. As per their reasoning, the 700 – 900MHz spectrum band which Google wanted to utilize is currently being used by telecom operators and so would lead to interference with cellular transmissions.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Prasad had expressed the same reservations back in December last year when approval for the project was still uncertain. He later agreed to let the enterprise move forward in-principle, pending approval of various government departments. It looks like Google hasn’t managed to pass this stage.
Prasad has also announced that Ernet India, an autonomous body working under DeitY (Department of Electronics and Information Technology), is conducting pilot tests to deliver internet connectivity to gram panchayats through white space technology. To recollect, Microsoft had launched its own experiments with the spectrum in order to deliver low-cost internet in India last year.
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White space refers to the TV bands which do not get utilized for beaming out broadcasts. These airwaves can instead be used for sending out mobile or data signals to far-flung regions which standard Wi-Fi or mobile tower transmissions cannot reach. The administration has allocated 60MHz of this spectrum to Ernet, 20MHz to BHEL and 10MHz to various other institutions.
According to PTI, Google will now have to submit a revised proposal with a different frequency band to the government in order to move ahead with Project Loon.