Weather balloons hovering at the outer limits of the Earth’s atmosphere could be used to provide mobile phone and broadband services to rural Britain.

Space Data, an American company, has enjoyed early success with a revolutionary service in which it attaches small phone masts to balloons to provide remote and rural areas with wireless internet access.

The group, based in Arizona, has supplied military and commercial clients for four years, and is now preparing to link with telecoms and broadband companies to offer a service to residential customers. Google is said to be among its likely partners after recent talks.

Space Data, which has patented its service in 41 countries, is already considering the UK as a potential secondary market.

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Under the service a lunchbox-sized transceiver is attached to a balloon that rises to an altitude of about 100,000ft (30,500m) after release. One balloon alone, the company says, can beam a signal to an area equivalent to 80 mobile phone towers, and 70 would cover the entire United States.

Local farmers and other land workers are paid to release the balloons, which are deployed in rural and remote locations deemed uneconomic by traditional communications companies because of their sparse populations.

About 20 per cent of the US land mass is outside the range of a mobile phone service.

Rural groups in Britain have long lobbied the Government about a “digital divide” under which tens of thousands of customers in rural areas either cannot obtain broadband or have to pay more for connections that are often much slower than those in cities.

Space Data, which has notched up 1,500 “flights” since its launch, releases about ten balloons a day from ten sites serving Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.

The service is the latest in a series of innovative schemes aimed at tapping into the potentially lucrative rural wireless communications market. Other groups are using satellites and even sewers to offer a service.

Space Data, which is backed by more than $70 million (£36 million) of private funding, claims that traditional phone and internet providers miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars a year in potential revenue by neglecting rural areas.

Jerry Knoblach, the co-founder of the group, said: “We are leveraging off a service — weather balloons — that has been around for a quarter of a century to tap into what is potentially a $10 billion market.”

However, the service, which should become profitable this year, has one drawback: the balloons last for only 24 hours before bursting, meaning that a constant supply has to be released. The expensive radio equipment then has to be retrieved by a team using GPS location devices.

Some environmentalists fear that the balloons could pose a threat to animals that eat the latex.

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