Google X goes to Vizag

AP Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has stood up to his promise of developing a Cyber City in his state that matches Hi-Tech City he had developed in Hyderabad. Google X, a high-tech arm of IT behemoth Google, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with AP Government to set up a centre to develop and test its cutting-edge technologies in Visakhapatnam.

The deal was signed by Nara Lokesh, state’s IT Minister on behalf of AP and Astro Teller, the company’s CEO, during the former’s visit to the San Francisco-based Google X. Vizag will be its first R&D centre outside the US.

Some of Google X’s projects are highly secretive. While many are at development and testing stages, a well-known project is driverless car that is undergoing field trials. Others are Google Glass and Project Loon that aims at providing Internet through balloons.

The AP Government has plans to provide high speed Internet and broadband services to nearly 120 lakh households and 130,000 private and public sector establishments by March 2019. Google X is closely associated with this project. It will deploy Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) technology that uses light beams to transmit data instead of cables or fibre optic cables. A revolution in communications, indeed.