Google Balloon To Provide Free Wi-Fi Across Sri Lanka

Free Wi-Fi connections will be available across Sri Lanka by March 2016 under an agreement the government signed on Tuesday with multinational technology company Google, a media report said.

The service will be provided with the aid of Google balloon, a technology which provides internet to large areas using high-altitude balloons, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported. Sri Lanka is set to become the first country in the world to have universal internet coverage via Google balloons.

The agreement in this regard was reached following a discussion held by state minister for defence Ruwan Wijewardene with Chamath Palihapitiya, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and considered as the richest Sri Lankan in the world.

Palihapitiya and several ministers later met president Maithripala Sirisena to present a report on the new technology.

With the instant approval of the president, an agreement between the state-owned Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) and Google was signed at the prime minister’s house in Colombo on Tuesday.