[Starlink] Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara

[Mike Puchol]

As I work for Taara, I’ll be happy to answer doubts & questions where I can!

With that, a few thoughts. Please note that these are my own personal musings, and not the official position of Taara - I’m not in PR or marcomms.

IMHO the “Taara is going to compete with Starlink” is a comment that was taken by a reporter and turned into the major headline. Think of it in terms of every time you heard of a social network startup becoming the new “Facebook killer”. Taara is currently playing in the middle mile, it is point to point, terrestrial only, and will move into last mile with the help of the optical phased array (the “Taara chip” that was announced at MWC).

In order to directly compete with Starlink, we’d have to become a fully fledged ISP, and vertically integrate the whole distribution down to individual customers - and we know what kind of investment that requires. Can we help ISPs that play on the same turf as Starlink? Sure. Can we help in urban cellular networks where densification is challenged by congested RF and costly fiber? Yes indeed. Are we a replacement for Starlink? No.

As for the current Taara Lightbridge system, it is a point to point, Earth-based, 20 Gbps bidirectional system. The maximum rated distance is 20 km as we keep a certain reserve margin, however, we successfully closed a link at 54 km across the Bay Area, and technically we could achieve 75 km with zero margin.

How do we keep a laser aligned? We use a combination of coarse pointing mirror which gives us 6º at slow rates (think compensation for structural movements due to day/night thermals), and a fine steering mirror that can adjust 0.5º at very high rates, used to compensate vibrations, and to some extent, scintillation.

The chip allows us to remove some of these mechanical components and compress some of the system, for example, removing the coarse pointing mirror and making the telescope smaller. The OPA allows focusing and steering the laser beam, and also compensate for phase and wave front errors, something we can’t do with Lightbridge.

Weather does affect the optical spectrum, to the tune of hundreds of dB/km at certain wavelengths - in scenarios where this can be a factor, we can be deployed in hybrid with an RF system. Our typical use cases are capacity upgrades, where instead of replacing an existing microwave link with another microwave link to maybe gain 1-2 Gbps, the operator can gain 20 Gbps for 95-99.9% of the time.

Best,

Mike
On Mar 17, 2025 at 22:22 -0700, Michael Richardson via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>
> David Lang via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> > Since it kept talking about being a replacement for Starlink, I assumed
> > that the towers would communicate with satellites. If there are no
> > satellites being used, then it's not going to be a Starlink competitor
> > as you would have to build a long chain of laser towers to try and
> > provide service everywhere.
>
> (It would work fine for the flat earth types though)
> (or if you live on Terry Pratchard's Discword)
>
> But, seriously we have lots and lots of microwave towers from decades ago.
> I think most are abandonned due to fibre being better, but getting new rights
> of way for fiber is probably hard. The railways were delighted to be
> involved 30 years ago, but now, I suspect the field is closed to any new
> entrants.
>
> So lasers between towers makes a lot of sense to me.
> Particularly through/across marshy tundra in, for instance, Canada's north.
>
> Just not between pacific islands.
>
> --
> ] Never tell me the odds! | ipv6 mesh networks [
> ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works | network architect [
> ] mcr at sandelman.ca http://www.sandelman.ca/ | ruby on rails [
>
>
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