A women-led startup Astrome has developed an innovative wireless product Giga Mesh providing fiber-like bandwidth at fraction of the cost of fibre. This product will help telecom operators deliver reliable low-cost internet services to suburban and rural areas.
Key Points
- Providing internet access to remote places in India and other similar countries has been difficult because the cost of laying fibre is too expensive.
- Thus, there is a requirement for wireless backhaul products that can high data capacity, deliver low cost, and wide reach.
- At present, available wireless backhaul products either do not provide sufficient data speeds or the required range or are very expensive to deploy.
- The wireless product called Giga Mesh developed by Astrome could enable telecom operators to deploy quality, high-speed rural telecom infrastructure at 5 times lower cost.
- Rural customers and defence customers have already signed up for pilots and will soon witness the demonstration of this product by Astrome.
- The deep tech startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has proved their millimeter-wave multi-beam technology in the lab in the year 2018, for which the company has been granted a patent in India and the US.
- The startup is supported by the DST-ABI Woman Startup Program of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.
- Since then, the technology has been converted to a powerful and scalable product called Giga Mesh.
- The product is capable of solving much of the last mile connectivity telecom needs of our country.
- The product has been proven on the field and also integrated with partner products for its upcoming commercialization.
- The Multi-beam E-band product, Giga Mesh, packs 6 Point-to-Point E-band radios in one.
- Thus it distributes the cost of the device over multiple links and reduces capital expenditure.
- The radio provides long-range and multi-Gbps data throughput at each link. Features like automatic link alignment, dynamic power allocation between links, and remote link formation help operators achieve significant operating expenditure cost reduction.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has also awarded Astrome with the ITU SME Award for the Most Promising Innovative Solution in Connectivity. They also got selected by a prestigious 5G accelerator program called Evo Nexus (sponsored by Qualcomm) which will help them launch their product in the global market.
At present, Astrome is conducting a field trial at the Indian Institute of Science (university campus). In this field trial, the company has already achieved data streaming at multi-Gbps speeds across the campus.
