UK-based Stratospheric Platforms (SPL) has introduced what it claims is the world’s first profitable demonstration of a HAPS-based 5G base station.
Representing extra indicators of the momentum behind the trouble to ship 5G protection from the stratosphere, the demonstration befell in Saudi Arabia, and noticed an SPL stratospheric mast – which for the needs of the demonstration had been put in on a civilian plane – ship high-speed cell protection from an altitude of 14 kilometres to a geographical space of 450 sq. kilometres.
To indicate off the capabilities of its expertise, SPL carried out a three-way video name between a land-based check web site, a cell machine operated from a ship, and a management web site positioned 950 kilometres away. One other check noticed 4K video streamed to a cell phone in a helicopter.
“This can be a momentous occasion for the worldwide telecoms business proving {that a} 5G telecoms mast flying close to the highest of the Earth’s ambiance can ship secure broadband 5G Web to serve cell customers with ubiquitous, high-speed Web, over huge areas,” mentioned Richard Deakin, CEO of SPL, in a press release.
Getting a mast to work at excessive altitude solely solves one a part of the issue although. It additionally wants a flying platform from which to function, and a civilian plane has apparent limitations, not the least of which is the human within the pilot’s seat. With that in thoughts, SPL is engaged on an unmanned, twin-propeller plane able to carrying its 5G base station.
“Our hydrogen-powered ‘Stratomast’ high-altitude platform presently below improvement, will be capable to fly for per week with out refuelling and canopy an space of 15,000 sq. kilometre utilizing one antenna,” mentioned Deakin.
SPL was based in Cambridge in 2014. In 2016, Deutsche Telekom turned its largest single shareholder and launch buyer. It got here out of hiding in 2020 with an indication in Germany of an aerial LTE base station.
Ought to SPL flip its HAPS imaginative and prescient right into a sustainable, business actuality, it is going to have succeeded the place some a lot greater names have failed. Google, as many will bear in mind, as soon as had a grand imaginative and prescient to supply connectivity from a fleet of balloons. Known as Challenge Loon, it launched its first – and what turned out to be solely – business service in Kenya in 2018. It pulled the plug in early 2021. In 2015 Google additionally dabbled with a drone-based HAPS service referred to as Challenge Titan, however that got here to an finish in 2016. Equally Fb tried to roll out drone-based connectivity below the Aquila model, however threw within the towel two years later.
As SPL’s demonstration demonstrates, these inauspicious examples don’t appear to deterred everybody from having a go at HAPS, and it isn’t the one one. Earlier this 12 months, Japan’s NTT introduced it’s working with its cell arm DoCoMo, plane maker Airbus, and Japanese satcoms supplier Sky Excellent JSAT to look into the feasibility of HAPS-based connectivity.
Per-HAPS flying base stations would be the subsequent large factor in telecoms in any case.