Tech firm Astrome takes high-speed internet to India's hinterlands

IISc-backed Astrome has deployed India's first indigenous technology to facilitate rural 4G and 5G connectivity for the BharatNet Project.

Located in Nidavanda village in rural Karnataka is a government school that recently got internet connectivity. The internet provided at the school is effectively being utilised to provide online educational sessions to the students from the teachers of a Bengaluru-based non-profit organisation e-Vidyaloka.

Nidavanda village is among many rural regions in the country which present the challenge of not being able to get internet connectivity. One of the reasons is that it becomes expensive to draw fibres to connect the villages and it is unviable to connect in rough terrains. However, this problem is being addressed by deep tech company Astrome, which is accelerating the deployment of 5G (5th generation mobile network) and SatCom (satellite communications) technology.

Astrome, incubated at the Society of Innovation and Development (SID), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has completed the first successful deployment of its indigenously developed product GigaMesh in rural Karnataka, to facilitate 4G and 5G connectivity. The deployment was done from Sompura Gram Panchayat to Nidavanda Village.

“We have managed to bring high-speed connectivity to Nidavanda village,” said Neha Satak, founder and chief executive officer, Astrome Technologies. “We are looking forward to more such successful deployments in the future,” she added.

GigaMesh is an e-band radio, with multiple-point-to-point (Multi-P2P) communication, making it the most effective way to distribute fiber capacity, wirelessly.  For example, a single GigaMesh at a Gram Panchayat in rural India can connect to multiple surrounding villages, thus, providing a significant cost advantage.

Astrome was awarded a contract to facilitate Broadband, 4G and 5G internet connectivity in rural areas through government-run BharatNet fiber. The project was awarded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) an attached office of the Department of Telecomm (DoT), Ministry of Communications.

Here the BharatNet fiber was connected to GigaMesh at the Gram Panchayat and wirelessly transmitted to another GigaMesh device which was placed at a government school at Nidavanda.

Astrome team setting up GigaMesh at Nidavanda

Astrome was founded by Neha Satak and Dr. Prasad Bhat in 2015. Satak holds PhD from Texas A&M University and a Master’s from the IISc in Aerospace Engineering. Prasad, an alumnus of IISc and the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, is a serial entrepreneur and technologist. Prior to Astrome, he co-founded a successful company in the domain of visual search and artificial intelligence.

The firm has attracted capital from investors such as IAN Fund (India), Urania Ventures (France-Germany), and Impact Collective (South Korea). Besides IISc, the company is also being supported by EvoNexus (San Diego), a 5G accelerator program sponsored by Qualcomm and Verizon.

Astrome said it is pioneering the future of millimeter wave wireless communication – be it on earth or from space. For instance, GigaMesh is a multi-beam e-band radio that is able to communicate from one tower to multiple towers simultaneously while delivering multi-Gbps (gigabits per second) throughput to each of these towers. It is a one-box compact solution with an integrated antenna. It uses advanced digital beamforming technology to form multiple links with one radio. 

The company said that the GigaMesh product is well-placed to address the large 5G wireless backhaul market in India.

Astrome is also providing technology solutions to satellite companies through its GigaSat and SpaceNet portfolios. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with a European company Methera Global to support them with technology in building its satellite constellation.

Astrome’s GigaSat product is a flat panel satellite terminal that supports communication in multiple frequencies. It will serve the need for low-cost user terminals for LEO (low Earth orbit) and MEO (medium Earth orbit) constellations and for terminals for GEO (geostationary orbit) satellites.

Astrome is also developing a fully software-defined payload technology for low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. “We offer this innovative payload technology to satellite operators who want to deploy the next generation of satellite networks,” said the company.