Free-space lasers offer a solution to bandwidth limit

17 Jun 2002

Future communications may be based on fiberless optics, believes Seattle-based TeraBeam Networks, a start-up company that aims to deliver the Internet to metropolitan businesses via free-space laser beams.

TeraBeam is a privately held company, which was founded in 1997, and has recently announced successful tests of its patent-pending Fiberless Optical network in Seattle. The company expects to announce strategic partnerships and pricings in the second quarter of this year.

The company believes that this laser-based technology will remove the bottleneck that currently occurs in the last mile of broadband communications. The technology is not tied to the conventional restrictions of the transmission window in optical fibers or to the digging permits, building riser wiring, rooftop lease management and spectrum rights that are needed for fiber-optics and wireless telecommunications.

TeraBeam says that the network can be deployed in days and can provide gigabit connectivity between local and wide area networks. The network can send gigabits of data through the air every second, which is thousands of times faster than the speed of current last-mile solutions. TeraBeam's transceivers are about the size of a small satellite dish and can be easily mounted in an office window.

The company's technology has recently attracted Dan Hesse to leave his position as president of AT&T's wireless unit and become chief executive at TeraBeam Networks.

Industry experts point out that, despite the advantages, lasers are susceptible to foul weather. Heavy rain, snow, sometimes turbulence in the air and particularly fog can attenuate laser signals and cause outages or slow connection speeds. However, TeraBeam is not the only company that is interested in free-space lasers for communications. Lucent plans that its OpticAir laser product line will be available in summer 2000. Broadwing, the communications company formed by the merger of Cincinnati Bell and IXC Communications, is also said to be watching free-space laser technologies as a way to break into new local markets.

SH