Astrome, a women-led startup, has developed an innovative wireless product that gives fibre-like bandwidth at a fraction of fibre cost to help telecom operators deliver reliable, low-cost Internet services to suburban and rural areas.
The wireless product called Giga Mesh could enable telecom operators to deploy quality, high-speed rural telecom infrastructure at five times lower cost, the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement.
"Rural connectivity customers and defence customers who have already signed up for pilots will soon witness the demonstration of this product by Astrome," it said.
Field trial
Astrome is currently 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, it said.
“Indian Institute of Science played a very critical role by helping us connect with investors, providing business mentorship, and giving us space to conduct our product field trials,” Neha Satak, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Astrome said.
The deep tech startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and supported by the DST-ABI Woman Startup Program of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), proved their millimetre-wave multi-beam technology in the lab in 2018, for which the company has been granted a patent in India and US.
Since then, the technology has been converted to a robust and scalable product called Giga Mesh, which can solve much of our country’s last-mile connectivity telecom needs. The product has been proven on the field and also integrated with partner products for its upcoming commercialisation.
The Multi-beam E-band product, Giga Mesh, packs 6 Point-to-Point E-band radios in one, thereby distributing the device’s cost over multiple links and hence 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.