Krishnaswamy, Taara’s general manager, says the next stage of development is a tiny silicon photonic chip that will obviate the need for many of the terminals’ mirrors and lenses and allow multiple connections from one transmitter. The light-based chip units could also potentially replace radio-based Wi-Fi networks in offices down the line, so-called Li-Fi.
Taara has a long way to go before it can compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, whose 7,000 satellites generated an estimated $9.3 billion in revenue from 4.7 million subscribers last year.
While Musk’s business sells subscriptions directly to consumers, Taara partners with large telecommunication companies such as Bharti Airtel and T-Mobile, extending their core fibre-optic networks to far-flung locations or within dense urban areas where laying cables is expensive or impossible.
“Think of it as a backbone that helps augment and accelerate existing infrastructure that’s out there,” Krishnaswamy said.
Teller and Krishnaswamy claim that Taara has numerous technological advantages over Starlink. Musk’s satellites use radio signals that transmit a limited amount of bandwidth to a fixed area, so more people in that space means a smaller amount of signal available to each one, slowing overall speeds.
That makes Starlink most effective in remote areas or on cruise ships and in airlines, but it is unable to compete with wired fiber- or light-based systems in cities at its current capacity.
Moreover, Taara terminals can be strapped to poles, trees, or buildings in hours rather than being blasted into space on rockets, and there are no politicized auctions of radio spectrum to navigate. The laser beams can criss-cross without the interference that radio frequencies suffer from.
“Connectivity is a pretty big problem… there’s still 3 billion people left behind,” said Krishnaswamy of the rivalry with Starlink. “I actually think there’s a lot of room for both of us.”
Teller said that as more people come online, the world will run out of traditional radio frequency bands and will have to shift even further up the electromagnetic spectrum.
“If you can figure out how to be the first business that starts moving data via light, once the whole world moves to that part of the spectrum, we think Taara is going to be in a really nice place,” Teller said, adding that it is “skating to where the puck is going to be.”
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