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Google Is Using Light Beam Tech To Connect Rural India To the Internet (techcrunch.com)
Google is preparing to use light beams to bring rural areas of the planet online after it announced to a planned rollout in India. From a report: The firm is working with a telecom operator in Indian state Andhra Pradesh, home to over 50 million people, to use Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC), a technology that uses beams of light to deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity over long distances. Now partner AP State FiberNet will introduce 2,000 FSOC links starting from January to add additional support to its network backbone in the state. The Google project is aimed at "critical gaps to major access points, like cell-towers and WiFi hotspots, that support thousands of people," Google said. The initiative ties into a government initiative to connect 12 million households to the internet by 2019, the U.S. firm added.
>> Light Beam Tech
(smacks forehead) (considers whether to be embarrassed to still be on SlashDot)
Back in the 80s I think I remember seeing giant towers that used light to let people talk from Houston to Dallas in REAL TIME! I think we called them microwaves or are microwaves no longer light? PS I did actually read the article (for once) and didnt see the frequencies that would be used
Two big high tech flashlights :), looks like limited distance and fog is a problem. FSOC
Nope, you're the only one. And you might be dyexslic.
#DeleteFacebook
I mean it should be both fast and high capacity but it should also be heavily affected by rain or anything else for that matter that could break line of sight.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I read the article. It was short on technical specifics. So I looked it up on wikipedia. Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC).
So what makes them choose this as a better choice than older proven line-of-sight technologies like Microwave radio relay. Microwave formed the backbone of AT&T and MCI long-lines and had enough umph to carry live video. Does the light relay system really have that much more bandwidth than microwave? FSOC looks inferior to me. Shorter distance (a few hundred meters vs hundreds of kilometers for mw and more attenuation with weather (fog, rain).
Me eyes! The goggles do nothing!
Should that not be" Me eyes! The Googles do nothing!
First... 'light beam'? Let me suggest first that they should have said something like 'laser signalling without fibre optic cables'. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.
Second, it'd be interesting to know what kind of laser - specifically, the particular window of EM they're utilizing. That will have a huge effect on what kind of atmospheric conditions it can tolerate, and how far it's good for. I've gone three links in and still can't find any mention of what frequency range they're talking about. And details on any automatic aim-adjustment tech would be awesome.
Third - and I know I'm probably a weirdo here - I wonder if anyone considered non-collimated light for broadcast? You might think of that as 'radio', but assuming we're talking near-visible spectrum it's a bit different.
In short, this press release has insufficient data to generate meaningful discussion.
Iknowrite?! Can you believe those greedy assholes are going out of their way to innovate and try to bring internet (and all the knowledge and human connection that entails) to a part of the world that lives in abject poverty? What real stinkers they must be! Screw you, Google, and take your kindness and innovation and everything else and just shove it!
I was worried we were going to run short of $5/hr software devs...
If we can send a book faster by using the clacks or on horseback.
x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
If they're barely scraping by then they just won't sign up for the brand new shiny internet service... which they didn't have before anyway and thus won't miss it--- NO HARM WILL BE DONE.
Forrest Mims wrote about lightwave transceivers in "Getting Started in Electronics" more than 30 years ago. You could build your own lightwave communications for a few dollars in electronics parts.
Nice to see someone has finally noticed. Also nice is the fact that you can communicate point-to-point without having to worry about licensing and rf interference issues. With lightwave, I don't have to worry about signal crowding simply because of my proximity to other users.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The local governments do this via subsidized oil, rice, & cooking gas.
What these people need isnâ(TM)t to make ends meet day to day but assistance in raising up the social ladder (do not get me wrong, there are quite a lot of people that need help with day to day).
Historically that would be seats in college, radios, clean water, electricity, bicycles, etc.
Now a days cellphones, internet access, motorcycles, etc.
That's great! I'm sure India doesn't have a problem with stuff in the air obscuring the line of sight right??
Not much there to go on, but that said the Wikipedia article is substantially outdated. A more recent description of field experiments can be found at: http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdige....
There are plenty of papers paywalled at the SPIE site as well if you'd like to get a better feel on what the state of the art is post the 2012 experiment described in the linked article.
All that said, the environment is your enemy as you go up in frequency - things like clouds, rain (but not always), fog (again, not always), and the pigeon that someone mentioned previously can break the link, but proper design of the modems can get through some of that. That said "some of that" will not get you 5 9's link reliability over all weather condition. It's not just optical; the mm-wave stuff being thrown around for 5G systems has many of the same problems - heck, certain bands of high frequency (say around 60 GHz) get soaked up by oxygen at incredible rates.
Regarding data rates, RF systems will struggle to beat FSOC. Well designed FSOC systems leverage technologies used in fiber communications; I've worked on air-to-ground links that exceeded 80 Gbps over a decade ago, it would be trivial to double (or more!) that rate.
Another consideration is cost - FSOC systems in general utilize pretty sophisticated optical systems that are effectively your antenna. The modem cost can be driven to par pretty easily, but RF antennas are generally much lower cost than optics.
But you don't have to fight for spectrum, which is a major advantage. The FCC and I imagine nearly every other country's spectrum regulatory agency do not regulate the near IR wavelengths FSOC systems run at. There are safety issues that need to be taken into account (eye damage), but those are well defined and don't generally represent that much of a problem.
And if the Internet connection gives them a means of earning money, then they can feed themselves. With an internet connection and a computer, I could do transcription work, receive requests to grow and deliver food, make textiles/handcrafts, remote education by video, learn technology. If not me, then at least my children.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Brilliant. Instead of putting a fiber in the ocean they just let the signal hop from shark to shark up and down the bay of Bengal.
Nullius in verba