GOOGLE’S parent company, Alphabet, has partnered with the Econet Group to launch a new high-speed broadband technology, which uses laser beams instead of fibre optic cables.
In a media update, Econet said the new technology can be deployed to connect two points that are 20km apart in a matter of hours, instead of about two weeks of digging to lay fibre cables.
Currently, the technology is said to have the capacity to deliver up to 10Gbits of Internet at the ‘speed of light’ capable of streaming high-quality video.
For Econet, this is ideal for connecting small towns, mines and large businesses. It can also be used to connect areas that are unsafe to lay fibre cables.
“News of the partnership between Google and Econet, reported by Techcrunch.com and several tech news outlets, represents a massive opportunity for Econet, which has set up a new company based in Nairobi Kenya to roll out a supporting network to Liquid Telecom’s fibre optic network business across Africa,” said the company.
Liquid Telecom is part of the Econet Group and has the largest fibre network across Africa. The new technology was developed by a company in Alphabet’s stable called X, and it looks at finding new high-tech solutions known as “Moon Shots”.
According to Techcrunch.com, X announced on Tuesday that its “Project Taara” high-speed optical wireless broadband endeavor was being rolled out across Sub-Saharan Africa through partnership with giant internet provider Econet and its subsidiaries.
“This deployment follows a series of small pilots in Kenya specifically, but now Taara and Econet are ready to start adding high-speed wireless optical links to supplement and enhance Econet service reach more broadly, starting with Liquid Telecom customers in Kenya,” Techcrunch.com reported.
“Taara is yet another approach to extending the reach of broadband networks to parts of the Earth that have typically not had access or high-speed connections, due primarily to infrastructure challenges.”