Goodbye Cell Towers
From WIRED: The makers of “Stratellite,” an airplane-like device, believe it will revolutionize the broadband and wireless industry — if it ever gets off the ground.
Wisconsin communications company Sanswire unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 13 miles above the earth and send broadband and mobile phone signals to an area the size of Texas. Flying above the jet stream but lower than a satellite — and one-tenth the cost at $25 million to $30 million — the Stratellite also would render land-based cell-phone towers obsolete, its makers say.
The company hopes to start building and launching full-size Stratellites as soon as next year, with hundreds if not thousands of the devices eventually straddling the globe, staying aloft for months at a time.