I’ve wondered how the four people living in North Dakota got around their large vast empty state on the cell phone and now I know. They don’t. :) But former Governor Ed Schafer wants the other three to get a good signal no matter where they are. Not by installing thousands of cell towers that cost a quarter of a million dollars each, but by putting up three balloons into the Dakota sky. “I know it sounds crazy,” said Schafer, now the head of Extend America Inc., a wireless telecommunications company. “But it works in the lab.”

So if it works in the lab and it since each balloon only costs $55, why not? By having nine latex balloons traveling across the state at about 30 mph, the repeaters would be able to bathe the state in complete cellular coverage. Once a balloon reaches end of life, at the state border, it would fall to the ground and a bounty would be given to those who bring in the repeater pack, if it survives trucks running over it or avoiding lakes.

An interesting technology and fix for a large urban area where it just doesn’t make financial sense to put in towers. Like Schafer says, “The nice thing is that we don’t have to weld a bunch of steel together to build a tower. We just let these babies go.”

And you thought Verizon never stopped working for you!

[tags]signal,cellular,north dakota,balloons[/tags]