Sergey Brin Meets Rudiantara to Discuss Project Loon and Indonesian Startups

Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google recently visited Indonesia and met a number of important officials, one of which was the Minister of Communication and Information Rudiantara. At the meeting, several points were discussed, including the problem of Project Loon and the government's plan for a program of a thousand Indonesian startups.

Regarding the Loon Project or the internet balloon project, Rudiantara admitted that he is currently still in the stage of preparing technical issues, including frequency allocation. Later, the frequencies allocated are not only to the operator but also to the back hole.

In line with Rudiantara, Brin also revealed that there were two frequencies being discussed related to Project Loon. The first is conjunctions which will be discussed with fellow telecommunications operators and the second is the frequency used by each balloon to communicate with each other.

"However, the great thing about Project Loon is how this balloon is able to reach not only users on the island but also at sea. There are still many people in the sea like fishermen, traveler, and several people who used to work in that place," said Brin like quoted from Liputan6.

Brin felt the conditions were suitable for Project Loon and was excited to cooperate in the use of this technology, especially in Indonesia. So far, Brin does not know the exact number of balloons that will be used and flown at the launch of the project.

According to Brin, his party did not want to apply for a license for Project Loon. Brin revealed that currently the presence of Project Loon in Indonesia is still limited to focusing on cooperation with local operators.

"We are still focused on collaborating with local operators. Previously, we had just collaborated with three operators, such as XL, Telkomsel, and Indosat. And for now still focus on that," said Brin.

Besides Project Loon, Brin and the Minister of Communication and Informatics also talked about startups. Rudiantara asked Google to help the government by synchronizing its program with the government's plan to raise 200 quality local startups per year.

"So we talked about how to increase Google's role in the context of startup development, especially incubators. Because Google has a program. Sergey also talked, okay, we will improve (supervised startups)," said Rudiantara as reported Compass.

Brin himself responded positively to the plan, although he could not confirm how much the increase in the number of startups that would enter the Google Launchpad Accelerator program would be.

"The numbers are not yet fixed, but currently from Launchpad Week there are 13 participating and from Accelerator to Mountain View next month there are eight. There are seven that have been announced, while the 8th is still undecided," explained Google Indonesia Communication Manager Jason Tedjasukmana.

As has been reported previously, Google Launchpad Accelerator batch First, several startups will participate, including Jojonomic, Kakatu, HarukaEdu, Kerjabilitas, Kurio, eFishery, and Setipe.