- The Taara Beam can provide internet connectivity using light
- It offers speeds of up to 25Gbps, which rivals fiber connections
- The device is for commercial use rather than for consumers
Getting a reliable internet connection can be tricky, with patchy Wi-Fi and a rat’s nest of Ethernet cables making the whole process feel like a chore. That’s one thing that the new Taara Beam promises to fix, and this former Google Moonshot project has a highly unusual way of doing it.
Instead of using traditional cables or any of the best Wi-Fi routers, this device provides internet connectivity using beams of light. In doing so, it apparently nets you speeds of up to 25Gbps, which can rival fiber optic connections.
That said, the Taara Beam is not intended for home use and is instead aimed at commercial customers, such as network providers, data centers and educational campuses. To that end, the shoebox-sized device can be fixed to lampposts and rooftops, with each one capable of providing internet connectivity at distances of up to 10km.
What’s more, it’s not like Taara will be shining blinding lights of internet all over the place, as its technology is totally invisible to the naked eye. While it does rely on line-of-sight, its light-based tech should make it unobtrusive and eliminate the need for physical cables at the same time.
A new Starlink rival?
By not having to rely on large-scale physical infrastructure on the ground (such as trenches for fiber cables), the Taara Beam could act as a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink system. Yet its low latency of around 100μs (or microseconds) is much quicker than anything offered by Starlink.
In a press release, Taara said that the Beam is designed to bring “fiber-like speeds to environments where traditional infrastructure is too slow, costly, or impractical to build.” And because the Beam is so compact, upgrading each unit could be a lot more straightforward than having to renovate more traditional internet networks.
So what are the downsides? One major one with light-based solutions is that they can be sensitive to atmospheric conditions, like heavy rain, fog and dust storms. Combine that with its need for line-of-sight operation, and Taara Beam certainly isn’t a panacea that will work flawlessly in any conditions.
However, it could be a promising extra solution for fiber-free internet access that sits alongside the likes of Starlink and Amazon Leo. Taara says the Beam will make an appearance at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in early March. We’ll be there on the ground reporting on all the latest tech developments, so be sure to check back for more info.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
