Telecoms and technology group Econet Group has teamed up with X’s Project Taara to expand and enhance affordable, high-speed Internet connectivity to communities across sub-Saharan Africa using a new optical wireless technology developed by Taara.

This is the first roll-out of Taara’s technology in Africa.

Taara is a project at X, Alphabet's moonshot factory (formerly known as Google [x]) which is working to bring affordable and abundant high-speed Internet access to unconnected and underconnected areas and communities using an approach to wireless optical communication technology.

Taara’s wireless optical communication links use beams of light to deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity over long distances.

In the same way traditional fibre uses light to carry data through cables in the ground, Taara uses light to transmit information at speeds as high as 20 Gb/s as a very narrow, invisible beam. This beam is sent between two small Taara terminals to create a link.

Taara’s links offer fibre-like-speed Internet access in areas where it is not economically viable, or too difficult to install fibre, for example, over rivers, sea straits, mountains, rugged terrains across national parks, or in areas where it is unsafe to dig trenches for cables, the company says.

Econet and Liquid Telecom will make the technology available to other telecoms customers, namely mobile networks and Internet service providers but also national research education networks.

Econet will deploy Taara’s technology in Africa across Liquid Telecom’s fibre-optic backbone and mobile network infrastructure starting in Kenya.

Liquid Telecom and X have been running pilot tests of the technology in Kenya since 2019. This included testing across the waters between Mombasa Old Town and Diani in Kwale County to bring high-speed bandwidth to communities on the South Coast.

Like many coastal and regional areas, this area is attracting travellers looking to work remotely and require high speed Internet connectivity. 

It is envisioned that this initiative will support efforts to revitalise local economies that rely heavily on tourism and have been negatively affected by international travel disruptions. Remote communities with high data demands which are not yet connected to fibre, also stand to benefit greatly from the enhanced data speeds, say the companies.