A startup created by Google parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)) is stepping into the broadband spotlight as it goes after a share of the federal government’s $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program. The company, Taara, says in a blog post that its wireless Lightbridge technology can beam high-speed internet over the air, offering an alternative to both fiber and satellite options.
Taara has stated on X that it is “BEAD-ready,” referencing the initiative backed by the U.S. government. The post followed a major revision to the BEAD rules by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced in early June, which now encourages technology neutrality rather than prioritizing traditional gigabit fiber. That change gives companies like Taara a chance to compete directly with Elon Musk‘s Starlink and T-Mobile’s (NASDAQ:TMUS) 5G Home Internet for funding.
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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in the announcement that the revised BEAD guidelines reflect a shift toward technology neutrality, aiming to deliver high-speed internet more efficiently and cost-effectively without prioritizing any single approach.
Taara is led by Mahesh Krishnaswamy, a former Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google engineer who spun the project out of Alphabet’s X moonshot factory after working on its earlier initiative, Loon. He has been focused on bridging global connectivity gaps since his early days in Chennai, India. “Today, there are like 3 billion people still unconnected, and there is a dire need to bring them online,” Krishnaswamy told Wired. His mission, he says, is to find scalable ways to bring high-speed internet to the places the fiber can’t reach.
Rather than laying cable underground or relying on orbiting satellites, Taara says it uses devices installed on towers to send internet signals through the air across distances of up to 20 kilometers. The company positions this technology as a solution to the “middle mile” infrastructure gap, which connects the main internet backbone to local delivery systems like fiber or 5G towers.
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According to Taara, this part of the network is especially crucial in remote and challenging environments, where last-mile connections often remain isolated without an efficient link to the larger grid. “Without it, even the last-mile fiber connections or 5G cell towers remain stranded, unable to reach the broader internet,” the company wrote in a LinkedIn post.
