From balloons to shrimp-filled shallows, the future is wireless

For some it costs too much, but up to a fifth of the population, or some 1.4 billion people, live where "the basic network infrastructure has yet to be built," according to a Facebook white paper last month. Even these figures, says Kurtis Heimerl, whose Berkeley-based start-up Endaga has helped build one of the world's smallest telecoms networks in an eastern Indonesian village, ignore the many people who have a cellphone but have to travel hours to make a call or send a message. "But they're not covered." Heimerl reckons up to 2 billion people live most of their lives without easy access to cellular coverage. Improving the range and speed of communications beneath the seas that cover more than two-thirds of the planet is a must for environmental monitoring - climate recording, pollution control, predicting natural disasters like tsunami, monitoring oil and gas fields, and protecting harbors.



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