Google owner wants laser to bring internet to rural areas – 06/26/2023 – Tech

Alphabet, parent company of Google, has tried and failed to bring internet access to rural and remote areas using high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere, but now, the company is investing in connection using beams of light.

The project known as Taara is part of the company’s innovation lab called X, also dubbed the “Moonshot Factory”, started in 2016 after attempts to use stratospheric balloons to deliver internet ran into trouble due to high costs, company executives said.

This time things are progressing better, said Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who leads Taara.

Executives from the project and Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecommunications and internet providers, told Reuters they were now moving towards large-scale deployment of the new laser internet technology in the country. Financial details were not disclosed.

Taara is helping to connect internet services in 13 countries so far, including Australia, Kenya and Fiji, Krishnaswamy said, adding that he has struck deals with Econet Group and its subsidiary Liquid Telecom in Africa, internet provider Bluetown in India and Digicel in Pacific Islands.

“We’re trying to be one of the cheapest and most affordable places in terms of dollars per gigabyte that you can get to end consumers,” he said.

Taara’s machine is the size of traffic lights that radiate the beams of light that carry the data — essentially fiber optic internet without the cables. Partners like Airtel use the machines to build communication infrastructure in hard-to-reach places.

Bharti Airtel Chief Technology Officer Randeep Sekhon said the Taara will also help provide faster internet services in urban areas of developed countries. He said it’s cheaper to transmit data between buildings than to bury fiber optic cables.

OX is Alphabet’s research division that develops projects that border on science fiction: it gave rise to the autonomous technology company Waymo, the drone delivery service Wing and the health technology startup Verily Life Sciences.