Nearly three billion people worldwide still don’t have reliable internet access. This hinders access to education, health care, economic advancement and basic communication, disproportionately affecting underserved regions across Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
To try to address this problem, Google parent Alphabet’s X, The Moonshot Factory (previously X Lab) created Project Taara to harness the power of light to deliver high-speed internet wirelessly at low cost.
Taara’s technological foundation lies in the legacy of another X project, Project Loon, which was cancelled before it reached commercial fruition. While Loon’s vision of stratospheric balloons delivering internet faced scalability and cost hurdles, its work in the field of “free-space optical communication” (FSOC) became the bedrock upon which Taara was built.
Leading the project is Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who suffered from limited internet access in his hometown of Chennai, India.
Taara’s innovation lies in FSOC, which is essentially fibre-optic internet without the cables. It transmits data wirelessly through focused, invisible beams of light, typically in the near-infrared spectrum.
The initial hardware solution, the Taara Lightbridge, achieved transmission speeds up to 20Gbit/s over distances reaching 20km using little power.
This first-generation technology relied on a system of mirrors, sensors and precision optics, guided by intelligent software, to align the light beam mechanically with high accuracy within a traffic light-sized unit.
A recent breakthrough has been the development of a silicon photonic chip, roughly the size of a fingernail (13mm). This miniaturised chip uses software and an optical phased array system with hundreds of tiny light emitters to steer, track and correct the light beam.
Beyond the lab
Laboratory tests have shown successful data transmission at 10Gbit/s over a 1km outdoor distance, with future iterations promising greater speeds and ranges through thousands of emitters. This miniaturisation and shift towards software-based control systems could potentially lead to lower costs, simpler deployment and the roll-out of mesh networks.
Since its inception in 2017, Taara has moved beyond the lab:
- In Kenya, an early deployment with Poa Internet, an internet service provider, revealed unexpected bandwidth reselling by customers. This led to the development of “Taara Share”, allowing local entrepreneurs to become internet providers, offering affordable connectivity to their communities through pay-as-you-go transactions.
- In India, a partnership with Bharti Airtel extended internet access to rural and urban areas where fibre deployment is challenging, with Krishnaswamy personally connecting his ancestral village of Osur.
- In Nima, a densely populated suburb of Ghana’s capital city, Accra, Teledata ICT has used Taara to deliver low-cost broadband.
- In the Caribbean, Liberty Networks in Anguilla used Taara to maintain connections between islands during a subsea cable repair.
- Even in the US, with its well-developed telecommunications infrastructure, Taara has partnered with T-Mobile USA for temporary 5G backhaul at events like the Coachella music festival.
Read: Nokia to give Liquid’s fibre network a big speed upgrade
The project has had some challenges, too, notably the susceptibility of air-transmitted data to weather conditions like fog, rain and dust, as well as the need for a clear line of sight. Maintaining precise alignment of narrow light beams on swaying infrastructure also poses an engineering hurdle.
However, the Taara team has developed AI-driven mirror systems and predictive algorithms for rapid beam alignment. AI-based adaptive beam control systems dynamically adjust laser power based on real-time conditions.
The silicon-photonic chip further mitigates misalignment issues through software-based controls. Error-correction protocols address brief interruptions, and redundant links are potential solutions for longer disruptions. Network planning tools optimise terminal placement based on weather patterns. Even unexpected challenges, like interference from monkeys, have spurred solutions.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a pan-African technology group, has been a partner of Taara’s over the past five years, delivering high-speed connectivity using its technology in areas with infrastructure gaps and affordability challenges.
Taara and Liquid have expanded to about 50 communities in seven African countries, including South Africa, with Liquid ensuring network reliability through backhaul links. The partnership often involves local ISPs in a three-way collaboration, with Liquid and Taara providing bandwidth as a service, allowing local service providers to distribute low-cost broadband to homes, schools and businesses.
Pilot tests in Kenya started in 2019 and included connecting the towns of Mombasa Old Town and Diani Beach. Liquid also connected Kinshasa with Brazzaville across the Congo River, establishing high-speed connectivity with 99.9% uptime. Further deployments in 2025 will involve mesh technology in various African markets. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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