Looking to transcend the physical constraint of every generation of connectivity to date – copper’s speed, fibre’s time to deploy and the scarcity of radio spectrum – Taara has revealed a “breakthrough approach” to commercial communications and connectivity infrastructure in the form of the “world’s first” wireless communication platform based on optical phased arrays.
Designed for operators, enterprises and next-generation data infrastructure, Taara Beam is attributed with bringing fibre-like speeds to environments where traditional infrastructure is too slow, costly or impractical to build, marking a shift from fixed, physical networks to infrastructure that can evolve at the pace of demand.
The new developments build on existing Taara work using beams of light to extend high-speed internet to places where traditional infrastructure is difficult to deploy. Its first system Taara Lightbridge is now deployed in more than 20 countries, with operators including Airtel, Digicel, T-Mobile, SoftBank and Liquid.
Taara Beam is described as being designed for the next phase, shrinking Taara’s wireless optics technology into a form factor around the size of a shoe-box to “radically” increase network density and flexibility. It is intended to see use in enabling high-throughput, low-latency connectivity across urban environments, enterprise campuses, datacentre clusters and event venues without the delays and costs associated with building physical infrastructure.
Taara sees Beam as being deployed on rooftops, poles or existing structures within hours, forming high-bandwidth mesh networks that support applications ranging from small-cell backhaul mounted on street furniture to fronthaul networks and AI-driven, real-time systems. By operating in the unlicensed optical spectrum, it avoids congestion and recurring spectrum costs while delivering performance at the speed modern networks require.
Explaining the rationale for the launch and the fundamental technology foundations, Google’s Moonshot Factory said that by moving the core functionality of high-speed wireless optical communication into an integrated circuit that controls light electronically, comms networks that can be deployed quickly, scaled more flexibly and improved over time, without the constraints of trenching fibre or securing scarce spectrum.
The proprietary optical phased arrays were developed at X and Taara labs over the past several years. The first product built on the photonic platform will be Taara Beam, engineered to deliver up to 25 Gbps of high-speed, low latency connectivity over distances up to 10 kilometres in a compact, deployable form factor.
Traditional free-space optical systems steer beams of light using mirrors, sensors and mechanical hardware. According to Taara, this is an approach that works but is physically constrained at scale. Taara Beam is said to represent a new architecture, shifting from mechanical control to increasingly solid-state control of light.
At Taara Beam’s core is an integrated photonic module containing over a thousand miniature light emitters arranged in an optical phased array, a solid-state steering device. This phased array allows the platform to track, shape and steer light with greater precision, improving reliability and latency while significantly reducing size and mechanical complexity.
“With light transmitted through the air, those constraints begin to disappear. Taara Beam is the first commercial product built on our photonics platform, and it’s just the beginning,” said Taara founder and CEO Mahesh Krishnaswamy. “We’re not just improving networks, we’re removing the limits that have defined them. We’re…building toward a future where connectivity feels less like infrastructure and more like the air we breathe – essential, abundant and almost invisible to the people who rely on it.”
Devin Brinkley, senior vice-president of engineering at Taara, added: “Silicon photonics allows us to integrate the core functionalities of wireless optical communication into a single module. We’ve compressed most of the functionality of our previous systems into a photonic module the size of a finger. As the technology matures, it can scale across performance, cost and size – similar to the exponential pace at which semiconductor platforms evolve.”
Taara Beam will make its official industry debut at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2026. Operators, infrastructure providers and partners can now request early access to the technology.
