[eyvindn]

This is an interesting idea and innovative approach - exciting stuff and congratulations on securing the 200k investment.

Some questions regarding the underlying technology:

You mention a "self-healing" grid. If one of these laser lines gets disrupted, say by a bird, or someone knocks over the laser receiver - how quickly does the PoP reroute traffic over a different path in the grid? Does it wait for a timeout, or is there some meta-data from the laser link to know when the interface is down?

One of the reasons you use the laser PoPs is that underground fibre is expensive. However - given that you have to pull overground fibre to every customer within the PoP - the total "length" of fibre in play will be roughly equal to the length of fibre required in a traditional underground installation. What's the advantage then? Why can't you pull all the fibre overground and bypass having laser PoPs completely?

Finally - given the massive investment in 4G and price wars in India, I would assume you are competing with mobile broadband routers. How is performance of such solutions in dense cities like Bengaluru? Is it unreliable or congested enough for people to want to pay for a dedicated fibre/laser internet connection?

[mildlyclassic]

OP here. Thank you for the questions. Yep, metadata and quick reconnection is the key for birds and such - we are able to do it almost instantaneously. Regarding 4G, our networks are choked and as many towers that can be placed, have. The spectrum is packed and noisy and dense commercial areas get horrible signal and speeds, the situation in rural areas is worse. And to make matters worse, less than 30% of the mobile towers themselves have fiber backhaul - so we hope to make a contribution there too. And finally, the core of the network can't be overhead fiber simply because it's not reliable enough to be the backbone because you're stringing it across trees, poles and over buildings. It's fine for the last mile to the customer's premises, but overhead fiber is not good enough for the core.