- Transcelestial has developed tech that uses lasers to transmit data at fiber-like speeds, without fiber
- T-Mobile tested Transcelestial’s laser communications at Coachella this year
- The startup is aiming to address the digital divide both on the ground and from space
What if you could deliver a connection that’s as fast as fiber broadband but without the hassle and cost that comes with actually building fiber? Transcelestial, a Singapore-based startup, has a device that uses laser beams to transmit data between two end points, without the need for underground fiber infrastructure.
If you can take fiber-like speed “out of the fiber core and run it wirelessly, suddenly the question about affordable, high-bandwidth connectivity becomes easier to answer,” said Rohit Jha, CEO and co-founder of Transcelestial.
The company’s CENTAURI device, which comes in flavors of 10G and 25G, can “stabilize these laser beams over large distances” while taking into account various weather conditions.
(Transcelestial)
That ability caught the eye of a major operator. T-Mobile took Transcelestial’s laser tech out for a spin at this year’s Coachella music festival — marking the carrier’s first public disclosure of deploying laser communications for 5G at a large-scale event.
“We were able to beam lasers from nearby into one of the four 5G temporary cell towers on a truck next to one of the main stages at Coachella,” Jha told Fierce. Those lasers then powered the 5G networks for thousands of T-Mobile customers.
As a result, Transcelestial’s tech delivered “around 150 Mbps to a single phone,” he said. “This is 25 times faster than some of the telco networks and it was done literally in a day set up.”
In addition to the U.S. and Singapore, Transcelestial is deploying lasercomms in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and across the Pacific islands. This expansion was fueled by $10 million in funding Transcelestial scored in 2023. To-date, the company has raised $24 million.
Trancelestial is bridging the digital divide in remote areas of the world. For instance, it’s powered broadband for “20-plus villages” across Malaysia and deployed a 10 Gbps link to a university in India.
“My personal goal is to start seeing how we can get involved with BEAD,” said Jha. “I think there’s been many attempts to make [more nationwide rollouts] happen. And our experience in other places outside the U.S. says you can’t do this with [just] fiber nationwide.”
To infinity and beyond
As its name suggests, Transcelestial wants to take its laser technology that works between buildings and kick it up a notch – all the way into outer space.
The company’s vision is to place satellites in low earth orbit, “kind of like Starlink”, which can then pick up data from “data center-rich or cable-rich places and then seed it into cities, towns and villages.”
“Think of it like building an undersea cable network in space,” said Jha.
But Transcelestial’s tech could go much faster than standard satellite coverage, he noted.
“It has capability to go from tens of gigabits to hundreds of gigabits to eventually terabits per second from orbit,” said Jha. “So, you can effectively drop a massive pipe into a city or town directly from orbit.”
There’s still a ways to go before this LEO network, dubbed “The Ring,” is ready for consumers. Testing is currently underway, with Transcelestial planning to launch beta service sometime in 2026.
On the cloud front, the company is plotting how to build data centers in space. Transcelestial in June inked a partnership with Axiom Space that will focus on demonstrating interoperability between laser communication networks and orbital data centers.
It’s not enough to do just data routing in space, Jha said. “We also need to supplement it with bringing data centers closer to customers.”
If a data center is in orbit, an organization’s data, compute and AI, “all of these things actually are sitting right above us. So the routing latency and stuff becomes much, much smaller effectively.”
Axiom is working on constructing the world’s first commercial space station, which is slated to launch in the next couple of years. This kind of space station could be capable of hosting “mega data centers.”
“Our satellites…they are more like edge data centers. So they have smaller compute and storage,” Jha said. “But when we need the raw horsepower, we can offload it to larger space stations.”
Of course, simply shooting down lasers from space won’t instantly solve connectivity gaps on the ground. Local distribution is still a challenge, he went on to say. That’s why partnerships with ISPs, 5G providers, port operators, etc., are key.
“No one thing can solve internet globally, you have to look at it more holistically,” Jha added.
