World Mobile's mission has always been to connect everyone, everywhere, building a network owned by the people who use it, reaching the communities that conventional infrastructure has never prioritized.
That's easier said than done. Most of the world's unconnected people don't live in places where towers make economic sense. Getting to them requires thinking differently about how connectivity gets built and delivered.
We’ve been climbing higher to do it. In 2023, World Mobile launched Africa's first commercial telecoms aerostat in Mozambique, a tethered balloon rising 300 meters above the Limpopo River, delivering mobile coverage across a 130-kilometer radius to communities that had never had reliable access. From a single platform. In weeks, not years.
That was the proof that aerial infrastructure works. World Mobile Stratospheric is what comes next.
World Mobile Stratospheric is a joint venture between World Mobile Group and Protelindo, Indonesia’s largest digital infrastructure company. Together, we are developing a hydrogen-powered stratospheric aircraft designed to deliver direct-to-handset 5G coverage across approximately 15,000 square kilometers from a single platform operating at 20,000 meters. The system is designed to connect standard mobile devices without requiring dishes or specialized hardware.
The next step in that journey is flight testing. World Mobile Stratospheric has acquired a Britten-Norman Islander aircraft, which will be used to validate the phased-array antenna payload in real airborne conditions ahead of full-scale stratospheric operations. Flight testing is scheduled to begin mid-2026.
Now, World Mobile Stratospheric has joined the HAPS Alliance, the international coalition of companies building the standards, spectrum policy, and regulatory frameworks that determine how the stratosphere develops as a connectivity layer.
Its members include SoftBank, whose HAPS radiowave propagation research was recently adopted by the ITU as global standards. T-Mobile. Aerostar, whose stratospheric balloon recently broke the world record for sustained flight duration. Nokia. Airbus. Ericsson. Companies treating the stratosphere as permanent, serious infrastructure, not a future possibility but a present commitment.
Gregory Gottlieb, Head of Aerial Platforms at World Mobile, on what this membership means:
"The stratosphere is where we can create the biggest impact. You're above weather systems, above jet stream turbulence, and able to serve a very large footprint from a single platform. Joining the HAPS Alliance puts us in the room where the spectrum policy and interoperability standards that enable that impact are being shaped. As we move toward flight testing and commercial deployment, being part of that conversation isn't optional."
The regulatory environment for stratospheric operations, including spectrum allocation, cross-border flight frameworks, and integration with terrestrial and satellite networks, is being built right now. The companies helping to build it will have an advantage when it's done.
World Mobile Stratospheric is one of those companies.
We're building what satellites can't and towers won't. And we're in the alliance helping to open the layer that makes it possible.
