Devices the size of a traffic light transmit signals to each other in the form of beams. While not inferior in speed, they are cheaper than laying fiber optics.
Google’s parent company Alphabet is launching inexpensive laser internet as part of the Taara project. Project leader Mahesh Krishnaswami gave the details to Reuters news agency.
Alphabet has long sought to provide Internet access to those living in remote areas. At first, Loon with laser emitters launched balloons into the stratosphere, but this project was unsuccessful due to very high costs. The engineers did not give up and in 2016 started the Taara project with the help of an innovation laboratory called X, which decided to transmit data using such lasers.
The technology is based on traffic light-sized devices that exchange signals in the form of directional light beams. Taara essentially works like a fiber optic link without any cables.
“We call it moonshot compost,” said Lab X chief Astro Teller. “Taara carries more data every day than it has in all of Loon’s history.”
Mahesh Krishnaswami says all is well at the moment with Taara connecting to 13 countries including Australia, Kenya and Fiji. The company recently collaborated with Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecommunications and Internet service providers, to build a massive Internet network in the country. Mahesh Krishnaswami recently traveled to the Indian village of Osura, where he lived as a child, to oversee the installation of high-speed internet equipment.
“There are hundreds of thousands of these villages all over India. I can’t wait to see how this technology will work to connect all these people to the network.”
Bharti Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said Taara will help provide faster and cheaper Internet service in cities in developed countries, as it is easier to install laser modules than to lay fiber optic cables between buildings.
They wrote that in 2021, the Taara laser internet made it possible to transfer 700 TB of data over a distance of 5 km. The scientists conducted the experiment in Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where installing optical fiber is very expensive and difficult.
Source: Focus
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