How Google's Taara can help provide faster internet connectivity to rural India?

The present digital infrastructure and its growth are governed by factors like good internet connectivity. What remains an area of concern is the fast and stable internet connections in remote areas of India. Alphabet's innovation lab called X, also nicknamed the "Moonshot Factory", has a solution to this which can help internet transmission with the help of beams of light.

The project named 'Taara' uses laser light to transmit information at high speeds through the air as a very narrow invisible beam which involves no cables, unlike the conventional methods of broadband internet. The technology is mostly aimed at providing connectivity to areas where the fibre fails to reach. At present, most of the high-speed connectivity operations are handled by the radio spectrum, but with growing data demand in the future, the radio spectrum would be insufficient alone as global internet traffic is expected to grow at a faster rate.

The team has partnered with Bharti Airtel, other telcos and internet service providers and is now planning for large-scale deployment of the new laser technology in India. The team plans to implement a speed of approximately 20 Gbps over distances up to 20 kilometres. At present, nearly 3 billion people around the world do not have access to the Internet, and billions more remain underserved with growing data demand, according to Alphabet's Company X.

"Taara will also help deliver faster internet services in urban areas in developed countries. It is less expensive to beam data between buildings than to bury fibre-optic cables. We are trying to be one of the cheapest and the most affordable places where you would be able to get a dollar per gigabyte for the end consumers," Bharti Airtel's CTO, Randeep Sekhon told Reuters.

Republic reached out to Bharti Airtel for comments, but it has been unanswered till the time of publishing.

"A cellular site with a remote internet connection (backhaul) can cover a large population and area, the backhaul could be LEO (low earth orbiting satellite connections) or over microwave connections," Rajesh Mishra, CEO, A5G Networks told Republic on the measures needed in remote areas of India.

"When it comes to connecting remote areas, cellular is the only technology that comes to mind, it is designed for wide areas that could be sparsely or densely populated," Mishra adds.

According to the company, the Taara team is currently deploying their light beam technology in India, Africa and other locations around the world. In terms of specifications, Taara can promise a cost-effective and easily deployable infrastructure that can boost connectivity in remote cities as well as villages. It has the potential to help thousands of people in the areas of education, business and communication benefits of the web.

According to experts, a beam of light would work efficiently, but it has limitations in line-of-sight deployments as well as distance and environmental conditions that impact performance. A better approach would be looking into many different possibilities for the backhaul, such as satellites, microwaves or lasers.