Alphabet delivers wireless Internet over light beams from 20km away

guest · Nov 10, 2020

Alphabet delivers wireless Internet over light beams from 20km away
Wireless network in Kenya to use light beams, like fiber but without the cables.
November 10, 2020
https://arstechnica.com/information...ess-internet-over-light-beams-from-20km-away/

Alphabet will soon deliver wireless Internet over light beams in Kenya using a technology that can cover distances of up to 20km. Alphabet's Project Taara, unveiled under a different name in 2017, conducted a series of pilots in Kenya last year and is now partnering with a telecom company to deliver Internet access in remote parts of Africa.

Kenya will get the technology first, with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa to follow. Project Taara General Manager Mahesh Krishnaswamy described the project in an announcement from Alphabet today: [...]
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Like fiber, without cables
Similar to fiber-optic cables, Taara's technology uses light to transmit data, but without the cables. Krishnaswamy continued:

[...] This beam is sent between two small Taara terminals to create a link. A single Taara link can cover distances up to 20km and can transmit bandwidth of up to 20Gbps+—that's enough connectivity for thousands of people to be watching YouTube at the same time.
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Project Taara is one of the "moonshots" developed at Alphabet's X subsidiary (formerly known as Google X).
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Blog entry - Mahesh Krishnaswamy - General Manager for Project Taara: Bringing light-speed internet to Sub-Saharan Africa

Project Taara is working with Econet Group and its subsidiaries to roll out wireless optical communication links across their network starting in Kenya
At Project Taara, formerly known as The FSOC Project, we believe that the key to bridging the digital divide is to find new ways to deliver affordable high-speed internet connectivity. Taara is developing wireless optical communication technology that delivers high-speed, high-capacity connectivity over long distances using beams of light.
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stapp · Sep 19, 2021

Taara’s wireless optical communications links are now beaming light-speed connectivity from Brazzaville to Kinshasa across the Congo River.

we recently helped bridge a particularly stubborn connectivity gap between Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Separated by the Congo River, the world’s deepest and second fastest river, Brazzaville and Kinshasa are only 4.8 kilometers apart — yet connectivity is five times more expensive in Kinshasa because the fiber connection has to travel more than 400 kms to route around the river.
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After installing Taara’s links to beam connectivity over the river, Taara’s link served nearly 700 TB of data — the equivalent of watching a FIFA World Cup match in HD 270,000 times — in 20 days with 99.9% availability.
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https://x.company/blog/posts/taara-beaming-broadband-across-congo/

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