CAIRO: High-speed internet via airborne beams of light

CAIRO: A novel way of delivering
high-speed internet via beams of light through the air has successfully
transmitted data across the Congo River.

It means
that citizens in Brazzaville and Kinshasa could get faster and cheaper
broadband.

Project
Taara is one of Alphabet X’s (formerly Google X) so-called moonshot ideas.

It grew
out of Project Loon, a broadband project using balloons in the stratosphere,
since shut down.

The
latest experiment means that a “particularly stubborn connectivity gap”
between the two African cities – Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo and
Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo – has been filled, said the team in a blog.

The
cities lie only three miles apart but connecting them is tricky because
traditional cable has to be routed around the river, making broadband prices
five times more expensive.

Hardware includes pointing and
tracking beacons that beam light to each other across distance

The
wireless optical communications (WOC) system provided nearly 700 terabytes of
data in 20 days with 99.9% availability, the team at X reported.

“While
we don’t expect to see perfect reliability in all kinds of weather and
conditions in future, we’re confident Taara’s links will continue to deliver
similar performance and will play a key role in bringing fast, more affordable
connectivity to the 17 million people living in these cities,” it said in
the blog.

It is the
latest iteration of the project which has been in development for three years.
X is working with Econet Group and Liquid Telecom to bring high-speed internet
to sub-Saharan Africa and has begun a commercial rollout in Kenya.

The
system uses very narrow, invisible beams of light to deliver high speeds,
similar to the way traditional fibre in the ground uses light to carry data but
without the cable casing.

The
technology, known as Free Space Optical Communications, grew out of experiments
the team had previously used to beam lasers between balloons in Project Loon,
which was shut down by Alphabet in February because it was no longer seen as
commercially viable.

It is not
perfect and the team admits it will not offer full reliability in challenging
conditions, such as fog, haze or when birds fly in front of the signal.

But it
has been improved by adjusting the level of laser power being transmitted,
which works a bit like a telescope, relying on mirrors, lights, software and
hardware to move the beam to exactly where it needs to be. The team have also
found ways to reduce errors due to interruptions such as birds flying through
the link.

“While
places like foggy San Francisco may never be an ideal spot to use WOC, there
are many, many places around the world with ideal weather conditions for
Taara’s links,” the blog read.

The
technology has also be trialled in Kenya, India, the US and Mexico.

Other
projects Alphabet X is working on include:

• Mineral – an attempt to
  develop new technology to build a more sustainable food system
• Tidal – looking at improving
  ocean health
• Everyday Robot Project –
  aiming to develop robots that can do useful tasks to help in daily life