Taara: Alphabet's Wireless Internet for the Congo River

Project Taara: Leveraging Loon's Technology for Connectivity

Although Alphabet concluded Project Loon earlier this year, the knowledge gained from this initiative focused on internet-broadcasting via balloon is being repurposed. Specifically, the high-speed wireless optical link technology initially created for Loon is now central to another ambitious project, known as Project Taara.

Wireless Optical Communication Across the Congo River

A recent blog post by Baris Erkmen, Taara’s Director of Engineering, details how the project’s wireless optical communications (WOC) links are currently delivering high-speed internet access across the Congo River.

The genesis of Taara stemmed from the Loon team’s successful demonstration of WOC, transmitting data between Loon balloons separated by distances exceeding 100 kilometers. This success prompted exploration into the technology’s terrestrial applications.

Bridging the Connectivity Gap

As part of this investigation, the team focused on addressing the connectivity challenges between Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo, and Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Despite being only 4.8 kilometers apart, separated solely by the Congo River, internet access in Kinshasa is significantly more expensive. Traditional infrastructure would necessitate laying approximately 400 kilometers of fiber optic cable around the river’s course.

Project Taara circumvented this issue by establishing links capable of beaming high-speed connectivity from Brazzaville to Kinshasa directly across the river. These links successfully transferred nearly 700 TB of data with 99.9 percent uptime within a 20-day period.

How Project Taara’s optical beaming connectivity works.

How Taara's Technology Functions

Taara’s WOC links operate by actively locating and aligning their light beams to establish a high-speed internet connection. While not ideally suited for foggy conditions, Project Taara has created network planning tools.

These tools can predict WOC availability based on factors such as weather patterns. Future development will allow the team to strategically deploy Taara’s technology in locations where it will perform optimally.

As stated by Baris Erkmen, Director of Engineering for Taara:

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Engadget.