COLOMBO, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka is to lose the Google Project Loon as the company was looking for other options, a minister said here on Thursday.
Harin Fernando, Minister of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, told a news conference that there was a delay on the part of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Project Loon is an innovation by Google and is a network of balloons travelling on the edge of space, designed to extend internet connectivity to people in rural and remote areas worldwide.
"Sri Lanka will lose the opportunity unfortunately. I briefed both the president and the prime minister about it," he told a news conference here in Colombo.
The project proposal was handed over to the Sri Lankan authorities in 2015. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Google Company the same year.
