A Swiss company, Stratxx, says it has launched a new tethered Airship called X-Tower, designed to broadcast both digital TV and radio.

According to Stratxx CEO, Kamal Alavi: “The X-Tower is the first airship that has successfully proven that digital TV and radio transmissions can be broadcast from an airship over a long period of time.” He says that far less energy is required to broadcast in this manner compared to conventional methods.

Is this a hoax? All that text in the report about ballistic tests on the fabric sound a bit strange. We know that Google was supposed to have looked at a project to bring high speed internet to large areas of Africa using an airship.

The only real application for a venture like this is in large, underdeveloped areas like Africa. If they intend to run it in Switzerland, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, the bands are so packed in the Vhf/Uhf/Ghz spectrum that Stratxx would find it difficult to slot into a gap where people could find them. If they tried, they would likely be in the same category as the old offshore pirate stations!

Remember, in about 1970 Radio Caroline’s Ronan O’Rahilly was going to fly planes and broadcast from them, but the project never got off the ground.