I'm low key afraid that this stuff is gonna get popular for .mil usage.<p>Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming. Its usage dots the sci books I've read over the years, but almost always for scary reasons.<p>Here's the Navy today announcing work on AirBorne System for Optical Relay and Broadcast (ABSORB), a (for now) low-cost prototype one-to-many (I maybe mis-inferring what multi-access means?) relayable free space system, <a href="https://defence-blog.com/us-navy-plans-to-revolutionize-naval-communications/" rel="nofollow">https://defence-blog.com/us-navy-plans-to-revolutionize-nava...</a>
RONJA[0] with lasers? >smile<<p>Free space optics always seemed like a neat idea. For space-based communication, particularly if your "mission" involves as little stray emission as possible, I would think free space optics would be a win.<p>I would assume there's more error correction, but otherwise I wonder how dramatically this differs from modulating light on a fiber. It seems like a similar problem.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA</a>
This section from the marketing blurb doesn't sound too promising:<p><i>When atmospheric conditions disrupt the light, our adaptive rate and hybrid architecture maintains the connection, with minimal downtime.</i><p>In the long run, all these wireless technologies (satellite or optical/microwave terrestrial links) will have a very hard time competing with simply laying down some optical fiber.
Apparently the biggest problems are line of sight interruptions and cost:<p>> The team has figured out how to compensate for potential line-of-sight interruptions like bird flights, rain, and wind. (Fog is the biggest impediment)<p>> “It’s fast and reliable but quite expensive.” He says he spent around $30,000 for the last light bridge setup he bought from Alphabet for testing.<p>Interesting that Meta was working on similar tech but abandoned the project:<p>Google’s Taara Hopes to Usher in a New Era of Internet Powered by Light<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-google-taara-chip-internet-by-light/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-google-taara-chip-inte...</a><p>More on Meta's internet via lasers project:<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/01/facebook-zuckerberg-internet-org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2016/01/facebook-zuckerberg-internet-o...</a>
When I came to Silicon Valley in the early 2010s and realized that all of the king's horses and all of the king's men could not defeat the scourge that is the US ISP oligopoly even in their own backyards, I knew it was pointless to ever hope for real FTTH in Bay Area markets in the next couple of decades.<p>Wireless solutions have orders of magnitude less bandwidth than fiber, and you can run lots of fiber in a bundle, whereas there's limited spectrum and only one already-saturated RF environment going wireless.<p>Only in the past few <i>months</i> has Comcast (the only actual high-speed internet option in our fairly typical Silicon Valley suburban neighborhood of ~$2.5m average homes) deigned to offer upload speeds greater than the previous 35mbit cap...now we can push 200mbit for $120/mo (for 1.2tb monthly combined U+D, add $20 for "unlimited") and you usually have to buy a new modem even if your old one supported the tech, since they only support specific firmware on specific SKUs. Meanwhile, GFiber is offering 8gbps symmetrical for $150/mo unmetered.<p>Reminder also that Ricochet was wireless internet in <i>1994</i> on 900mhz ISM using FHSS in the Valley. Ooh how far we've come in 30 years.
This looks like the infrared laser system that I worked on at a startup from 1980-1992. That system would create a full-duplex link running at either E1 or T1 speeds, with a distance limit of about 1 mile. I remember there were about a dozen systme shipped worldwide. There was one in canada. Another was sold to Alameda County, Calif. Another made a 2-path jump between some high-rises in New York City. Still another was in Malasia, used by a bank. There was also one that was located to straddle the Texas-Mexico border for a Chtsler factory to allow communications between the two factories and it wasn't 'legal' to string a cable between the buildings wuith the border being between. That one was frequently getting sent back to me for 'repair', the biggest issue being vandalism of the attached rifle scopes on the Mexico side. Which then required new rifle scopes, and a re-calibration on our field in Golden, Colo. Our company was named Telecommunication Products Inc., which was bought out by a company that was deeply involved in leasing TV-service to hotels. That's when the laser really died.
What's so innovative about this? The distance? Some sort of mesh routing? Point-to-point optical wireless links have been available commercially for quite a while.
Wait, "Google X" is now just known as "X"? So there is a separate "X" from Alphabet and "X" from tweet all day guy?
The second episode of the Google Moonshot podcast covers this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaYGw5_PE0</a>
Is this optical phased array beam steering hardware supposed to be affordable for ISPs such as Monkeybrains to use for end users, or is this just for backhaul connections?
There's no mention of Starlink, the main competitor (not fiber).<p>Whenever I travel and see the high latencies in hotel, I'm waiting for being able to Starlink from my mobile phone.<p>It requires huge antennas on the satellites, but we're getting closer to that with every Strarship launch.
This doesn't work in fog. Space lasers are great. No fog. Everyone wants the 500 Terahertz frequencies to work because bandwidth. They have about 25,000 times the carrying capacity of say 20 Ghz. The lower Ghz stuff penetrates weather to varying degrees. Visible light not so much unless it's a vacuum which is perfect. They should move their nodes into space. Oh wait someone already did that.
> overcoming the stubborn connectivity gaps that prevent nearly 3 billion people from accessing the internet.<p>I doubt it's really that big number. There will always be a gab because... toddlers and kids <5 years old don't use internet.
I certainly am missing the point --- targeting internet with electromagnetic waves isn't exactly new technology?<p><a href="https://www.dfmg.de/en/our-benefits/radio-relay-links.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dfmg.de/en/our-benefits/radio-relay-links.html</a>
<a href="https://www.dfmg.de/de/unsere-leistungen/richtfunkanbindungen.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dfmg.de/de/unsere-leistungen/richtfunkanbindunge...</a><p>so now instead of electromagnetic waves it's light?<p>what am I missing?
> <i>In the same way fiber optic cables in the ground use light to carry data, Taara uses narrow, invisible light beams to transmit information through the air...</i><p>If the light is "invisible" then is it even light? I looked it up and it's infrared.<p>Do we consider UV and infrared to be light? Or are they UV and infrared period, in <i>contrast</i> to light? I mean, nobody would ever call x-rays or radio waves "light". You'd never say "it's emitting infrared light", would you?<p>Or do they just not want to use the word "radiation" in their marketing, because that sounds scary and cancer-causing?<p>I'm just curious, since "invisible light" immediately jumped out to me as a contradiction in terms.