Low Cost Wireless Internet Access for Rural Areas using Tethered Aerostats

ICT plays an indispensable role in the overall development of rural areas, especially in developing economies. There is an urgent need to bring the rural areas into the mainstream by providing them last mile connectivity, especially during natural disasters and calamities, when other modes of communications are severely hampered. This paper describes a low cost innovative solution for providing internet access to rural areas using tethered aerostats, which can easily be relocated. The total cost of this relocatable system was found to be nearly half of that of a conventional fixed tower based system.