26-6-2023 (CALIFORNIA) Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is using beams of light to deliver internet service to remote areas in a project called Taara, part of Alphabet’s innovation lab called X. The company previously tried to bring internet access to remote areas using high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere, but the project failed due to high costs. Taara is now delivering internet services to 13 countries, including Australia, Kenya and Fiji, and is moving towards larger-scale deployment of the new laser internet technology in India, according to executives at Taara and Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecommunications and internet providers.
Taara’s machine is the size of traffic lights, and it beams the laser carrying the data, essentially delivering fiber-optic internet without the cables. Partners like Airtel use the machines to build out communications infrastructure in hard-to-reach places. Taara has already struck deals with Econet Group and its subsidiary Liquid Telecom in Africa, internet provider Bluetown in India, and Digicel in the Pacific Islands. Taara executives aim to make the service as affordable as possible and are striving to provide the cheapest dollar per gigabyte to end consumers.
Randeep Sekhon, Bharti Airtel’s chief technology officer, said Taara will also help deliver faster internet service in urban areas in developed countries. He added that it is less expensive to beam data between buildings than to bury fiber-optic cables, which is why he views this technology as disruptive.
Taara’s success is already being noticed. In Osur, an Indian village where Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who leads Taara, spent his childhood summers, the installation of Taara equipment is bringing high-speed internet to the village for the first time this summer. Krishnaswamy said there are hundreds of thousands of these villages across India that still lack internet access. Google in July 2020 committed $10 billion for digitizing India and invested $700 million for a 1.28% stake in Bharti Airtel last year. X and Google are sister companies under Alphabet, while Taara’s partnership with Bharti Airtel is separate from the Google investment.
