Lately, I was busy reviewing chapters of an upcoming Symbian book - I hope I did a great job and I'll have more time for blogging now, so...

I was inspired to write this post by the idea presented in WSJ's article. Floating cells may be an excellent way to increase coverage in specific geographic areas (e.g. Africa), during some events where there're a large number of cellphone users gathering (e.g. Olympic Games, Mobile World Congress, ...) - after the event, floating cells may be used somewhere else. The risk is worth the gamble, but maybe not with balloons (OK, it's an inexpensive solution, but has some drawbacks - works only 24 hours, needs 'launch crew', probably won't work in bad weather conditions - strong wind, hail, etc.). I'd rather use some kind of small robo-planes (which may use solar energy) that will return to home station for refuel and maintenance. Such solution could be fully controlled by the software and work more than a day. On the other hand, I think it's worth considering mixing some solutions on the ground with described idea to make it more reliable, like cell repeaters or peer-to-peer mobile phone network.

I'm curious about other solutions that improve floating cells concept... (and I don't work at Google!)