Alphabet free-space optics spin-out Taara is bringing some industrial light and magic to Californian production company Cintegral.

The deal will see Taara's light-based wireless optical connectivity (WOC) used in remote film and TV productions for directors, editors, and virtual effects teams to collaborate in real time.

In remote production setups where cable-based infrastructure is often unfeasible, footage is typically stored on-site and must be physically transported to post-production for transfer, processing, and archiving. With the firm’s flagship Lightbridge solution powering Cintegral’s ST 2110 fiber-over-air solution, 4K and 8K footage is beamed wirelessly between filming locations for production staff to collaborate on.

According to Taara, the portable solution is already being used to support major studios such as Amazon, Netflix, and Disney, with use cases spanning sports, broadcast, and live media production.

“We’re giving production teams the power to deploy fiber-class connectivity out of thin air, exactly when and where the shoot demands it,” said Taara founder and CEO Mahesh Krishnaswamy.

Showcased in SDxCentral’s recent Telecom Supplement, Taara is promising the next generation of wireless backhaul with free space optics, in which light is used to communicate from one point to another.

Taara was born out of Alphabet's X Labs, specifically Project Loon, a system of high-altitude balloons that formed an aerial wireless network to deliver the Internet to remote and rural communities.

That venture, like many others in the program, was ultimately shut down by Alphabet, with a number of its patents sold off to SoftBank. Taara, though, has gone from strength to strength, spinning out of the “Moonshot Factory” as an independent company last year with backing from venture capital firm Series X Capital.

The firm recently unveiled Lightbridge Pro, its latest beaming solution, said to “instantly upgrade” existing infrastructure over the air, reportedly offering 99.999 percent carrier-grade reliability.

It also launched a photonics chip designed to break data center bottlenecks with light-based connectivity, while helping provide Internet services in more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, Australia, Kenya, and Fiji.

Taara is no stranger to the entertainment and broadcasting world, either, having previously provided networking for the Coachella music festival in 2023 with T-Mobile, as well as a recent iteration of the US Open.