Project Titan will fly lightweight solar-powered airplanes to serve as remote satellites. Google acquired the rights to the development of the project after acquiring original the original makers, Titan, last year.
Sundar Pichar, Google’s senior VP responsible for overseeing Android, Chrome and Google apps, spoke on stage this morning at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Google’s vision of using new technologies, including drones, to provide Internet access to some of the 4 billion people currently without it.
Project Titan is designed to compliment Project Loon, which involves floating balloons serving as cell towers. Loon focuses on providing mobile coverage across large regions whereas the powered setup of Titan will be able to serve narrower, more specific areas.
The third program that Google is developing to help provide connectivity to rural areas goes by the name Project Blank. It consists of the rollout of a fiber network throughout poorer nations for local operators to provide 4G services. A rollout is planned for Africa later this year.
With all three programs now a long way into development, it is just a case of finding partners to support the launches of each one.
With Titan now nearing a state where it could be deployed for actual use, Google has begun to consider in more detail about what it could be used for. The idea is to use the self-powering drones to supply Internet access to the locations below them, a facility which could prove very useful after natural disasters when Internet connectivity has been destroyed.
