(ORDO NEWS) — The Taara project from parent company Google has helped connect two cities separated by the Congo River with laser internet.
As part of the Taara project, Google’s parent company was able to transmit data over the air using a laser at a speed of 20 Gbps.
The laser internet idea started with a project called Loon, which was being implemented by Google. Initially, he had high goals to connect remote regions to the Internet using laser beams between balloons at high altitudes. However, after several years of successful testing, the project was ultimately halted in January 2021 due to huge financial costs.
Balloons may have failed, but laser internet is still a promising technology. Ultimately, wireless optical communication systems could help connect communities where complex networks of underground fiber optic cables cannot be built, and where cellular or satellite Internet is unstable or expensive.
To solve this problem, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has proposed a new concept for the laser internet in the Taara project . As part of the latest technical demonstration of the project’s capabilities, scientists created an internet connection between the cities of Brazzaville in Kinshasa in the Republic of Congo. While the cities are only 4.8 kilometers apart, Internet access requires more than 400 kilometers of fiber to be pulled to bypass the Congo River. As a result, Internet connections in Kinshasa are much more expensive.
In 20 days, as part of the experiment, scientists transferred almost 700 TB of data at speeds up to 20 Gb / s with 99.9 percent availability. Of course, narrow beam transmission over the air will never be completely reliable due to birds, rain, fog and other interference, but in good weather conditions, this data transfer rate is still impressive.
However, even with this technology, the weather in some regions will not be suitable for wireless optical communication. But, according to scientists, most of the world should be able to provide at least 90 percent annual availability.
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