Pop goes Telkom Kenya’s rural coverage as Loon sinks its bal Sign in with LinkedIn 22 January 2021 | Alan Burkitt-Gray Telkom Kenya is set to lose its balloon-powered 4G network, only months after it launched the service in the presence of the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. The closedown follows the decision by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to shut down its Loon project, a scheme to deliver rural broadband from 35 or more separate balloons. Uhuru presided over the launch in July 2020 in the presence of Kenya’s information technology minister Joe Mucheru, with Telkom Kenya CEO Mugo Kibati. Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth said this morning that “Loon will be winding down” because “we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business”. He did not mention the effect on Telkom Kenya, or on Vodacom, which was also trying the technology.