HAPSMobile
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BT is following its German rival and shareholder Deutsche Telekom in looking at using aircraft to deliver broadband to remote areas. -
SoftBank has successfully tried out a tethered balloon as a base station, using a cylindrical, rotating antenna that it first talked about last year.
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SoftBank is setting up a high-altitude platform company to improve rural mobile coverage, in Australia with Lendlease, a multinational construction, property and infrastructure company.
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SoftBank is raising 30 billion yen (US$263 million) to fund its work in high-altitude mobile services from the stratosphere.
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Google’s former Moonshot project, Loon, has transferred its patents to SoftBank for the Japanese company’s own balloon-based base station work.
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SoftBank and its flying base station unit, HAPSMobile, say they have found a way to increase coverage from its Sunglider uncrewed solar-powered aircraft.
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The next generation of mobile communications will need to offer 100% global coverage with guaranteed service levels, according to SoftBank’s head of advanced technology.
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Japanese operator and investor SoftBank has taken a significant move to unify and coordinate all of its connectivity solutions that operate from above the Earth’s surface.
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Masayoshi Son is stepping down from leadership of SoftBank on 1 April, to be replaced by the group’s CTO, Junichi Miyakawa.
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Telkom Kenya is set to lose its balloon-powered 4G network, only months after it launched the service in the presence of the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
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Deutsche Telekom has demonstrated high-speed 4G mobile transmission from a remotely powered aircraft in a project to test ways to expand rural coverage.
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SoftBank’s HAPSMobile has successfully transmitted 4G mobile signals – including a video call – from an uncrewed solar-powered aircraft 19km above New Mexico.
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Google’s sister company Loon is testing balloons that will provide 4G services across Kenya.
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A SoftBank company has successfully tested the first flying platform that could be used to deliver broadband communications to remote areas.
