Google’s parent company Alphabet’s innovation Team X is exploring a new approach to provide internet connectivity in India.
It is planning to use FSOC Boxes. FSOC stands for Free Space Optical Communications. Alphabet’s X team used this FSOC technology in its Project Loon to send data reliably between balloons flying on the stratospheric winds.
Now it is going to use the same technology, but with Boxes instead of Balloons.
FSOC links use beams of light to deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity over long distances — just like fiber optic cable, but without the cable. And because there’s no cable, this means there’s none of the time, cost, and hassle involved in digging trenches or stringing cable along poles. FSOC boxes can simply be placed kilometers apart on roofs or towers, with the signal beamed directly between the boxes to easily traverse common obstacles like rivers, roads and railways.
Alphabet has been working with AP State FiberNet, a telecom company in Andhra Pradesh, a state in India which is home to more than 53 million people. Less than 20% of residents currently have access to broadband connectivity, so the state government has committed to connecting 12 million households and thousands of government organizations and businesses by 2019 — an initiative called AP Fiber Grid.
AP State FiberNet has announced that they’ll be rolling out two thousand FSOC links created by the Alphabet’s team at X. These FSOC links will form part of the high-bandwidth backbone of their network, giving them a cost effective way to connect rural and remote areas across the state. The links will plug critical gaps to major access points, like cell-towers and WiFi hotspots, that support thousands of people.
News Source: https://blog.x.company/exploring-a-new-approach-to-connectivity-861a0159f63e
