The Cost of a Traveling Gigabyte

Every fiber optic cable carries data as pulses of light traveling through strands of glass. Fiber forms the backbone of today's internet. Yet in the modern day U.S., using light to communicate information requires us to physically lay and bury fiber, costing up to $264,000 per mile. Labor alone drives more than 70 percent of this cost, and securing right-of-way permits can consume months, if not years. While fiber has revolutionized global connectivity, deploying more of it still means digging trenches, securing permits, and laying physical infrastructure. What if that same light could travel through free space instead? For nearly a decade of research and development at X, Google’s Moonshot Factory, the Taara team, too, has pushed the limits of light. Taara’s wireless optical communication unwraps the same frequency of light inside fiber optic cables, and simply beams it over the air, bypassing the limits of physical infrastructure. No cables, no trenching, no permitting challenges. Wireless optics delivers high-speed connectivity where fiber can't reach fast enough: beyond mountains, across rivers, through vast terrain – bridging the several kilometers that unlock access to the fiber backbone of the digital infrastructure. Best of all, beaming light over the air costs about 10 percent the cost of burying fiber.