- Taara is working with StarTouch to expand free space optics in the enterprise market
- Taara’s CEO thinks FSO is beneficial for enterprises that need high-speed connectivity but don’t have access to fiber
- The company is also interested in BEAD and other ways to bridge the digital divide
Free space optical (FSO) technology, which uses light to transmit data without a cable conduit, is yet another option that’s cropped up for rural broadband connectivity. But the technology is also capable of supplying enterprises with their networking needs, Taara CEO Mahesh Krishnaswamy told Fierce.
Taara, which specializes in bringing laser-powered internet to hard-to-reach locations, is partnering with business telecom operator StarTouch to expand FSO across multiple industry verticals, such as manufacturing plants, education campuses and retail hubs.
The primary reason for the partnership boils down to capacity, Krishnaswamy explained. StarTouch over the two decades has built nearly 400 towers to provide services like carrier transport, microwave point-to-point links and metro Ethernet, but they’ve “essentially run out of capacity on those towers.”
Enterprises are naturally demanding higher network availability and uptime, “yet they don’t want to pay for the costs associated and that cost is actually increasing over time,” he said.
Furthermore, StarTouch’s footprint in mostly in western U.S. states like California, Oregon and Washington, places with mountainous and “very rugged terrain” where it’s difficult to lay fiber. In Krishnaswamy’s view, that’s where FSO can shine. Proponents of the tech have argued FSO is also useful for “hopping” over railroads and rivers.
It’s not just for traversing remote locations. Enterprises and retailers are a big market for FSO because many of them are in dense urban corridors where it’s costly to dig up streets for fiber, Lumen’s director of Strategic Innovation Tom Barnett told Fierce last year.
Nearly 75% of enterprises, cell sites and multi-dwelling units around the world lack a fiber connection despite typically being just one mile away from existing fiber infrastructure, according to TIA, which recently established a working group to create U.S. standards for FSO communications.
Taara already provides backhaul for operators like Bharti Airtel, T-Mobile and Vodafone. The company touts its Lightbridge technology can beam 20 Gbps of high-speed connectivity across a distance of up to 20 kilometers.
Krishnaswamy noted since Taara doesn’t directly go to the enterprise, its telco partners play a key role in delivering FSO tech and “[finishing] that piece of the puzzle.”
“These conversations with the enterprises and the carriers are giving us the volume [and] the much-needed boost to this technology, which will further subsidize the cost for connecting the rural parts of the world,” he said.
Taara’s thoughts on BEAD
On the rural broadband front, Taara thus far has deployed its technology to connect underserved communities in parts of Africa and India. The company is also interested in participating in the U.S. government’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
While Krishnaswamy thinks BEAD is a “golden opportunity” for FSO, it still depends on how much operators and states will consider other technologies other than fiber. States thus far still intend to award most of their BEAD funds to fiber providers, though satellite and fixed wireless have gained some traction following the new program rules.
He said it’s critical to drive up awareness of FSO “because we could get the job done faster, cheaper and in a more energy efficient way, without any environmental degradations and without compromising on speed latency or the end user experience.”
The challenge with FSO
That being said, Krishnaswamy acknowledged FSO, like any other broadband or wireless technology, isn’t without some disadvantages. Deploying laser beams through foggy or rainy areas is a big challenge.
“The higher up in frequency you go, the more you’re prone to environmental conditions,” he said. “Specifically for free space optic solutions, which uses light, anything that disperses light or matches the wavelength of what we are transmitting, it can scatter the beam.”
It’s not an issue that can’t be dealt with. Krishnaswamy said Taara is working on tools that can predict weather conditions before deployment and also ensure there are “alternate ways by which you can work around the fog in the case of an outage.”
FSO is far from a new concept, as other companies like Attochron, Transcelestial and X-Lumin are doing their own work with the technology. But Krishnaswamy reiterated awareness remains the biggest hurdle.
“This technology has been around for a long time, but it also hasn’t had the best moments,” he said.
“People have tried it and have given up on it,” not only due to weather challenges but also just the sheer precision required to transmit these light beams. It’s like “being the size of chopstick pointing at a grain of rice several kilometers away – that requires a very precise amount of optics and alignment,” he added.