Wi-Fi Balloons to Be Deployed across Iran for Emergency Situations

In a post on his Twitter account, Jahromi said the project is aimed at providing internet services at the shortest possible time for users in emergency situations.

Following a pilot project to deploy a local balloon in border areas with Iraq last month to offer services to the Iranian pilgrims heading to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, the Crisis Management ddpartment of the ICT Ministry has removed its faults and now it is determined to deploy similar balloons in all provinces across the country for offering services in emergency situations, he said.

Iran deployed the balloon in its border with Iraq as part of an unprecedented project to provide free Wi-Fi internet service for the Arba’een pilgrims.

The balloon was located at a height of 500 metres. In this project, a radio transmitter was installed in the city of Mehran and the balloon was deployed in the border area.

The project was launched in cooperation with the Space Research Institute.

The Internet balloon had a 100 MB input bandwidth, which is considered to be responsive given that its users were passing by and were not resident in the area.

The project was supposed to become operational last year, but due to non-technical reasons it was implemented incompletely. In general, the use of balloons depends on weather conditions, and if the weather conditions are favourable, it could be operational.