Sceye airship beams mobile service to Japan from the stratosphere

An unmanned Sceye airship flew from New Mexico to Japan and back, delivering mobile broadband to unmodified phones via SoftBank's core network from 16.5–17 km altitude. The craft covered nearly 30,000 km and spent over seven days over Japan; SoftBank targets commercial service in Japan from 2027.

• Flight launched Aug 9 from Roswell and landed Sept 5 in New Mexico
• Airship held a station-keeping radius as small as 5 km off Cape Muroto
• Server and core network ran onboard: 68 ms latency, over 40% lower
• Each platform would cover the area of about 500 ground towers