By Google yesterday announced that its “Project Taara” a high-speed optical wireless broadband endeavor will be working with internet provider Econet and its subsidiaries to begin rolling out its tech across Sub-Saharan Africa
Alphabet’s X “Moonshot Factory” yesterday announced that it has tapped the Econet Group as its partner to launch a new high-speed broadband technology which uses laser beams instead of fibre optic cables.
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.
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.
It can currently deliver up to 10Gbits of Internet capacity at the ‘speed of light’ capable of streaming high-quality video.
It 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.
Liquid Telcom 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”.
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