- Transcelestial unveiled Centauri+, an upgraded laser terminal offering up to 40 Gbps and quantum-safe capabilities
- The company is developing terminals and optical ground stations to support a future space-based laser communications network
- Transcelestial says the network could help serve AI workloads in regions where terrestrial infrastructure falls short
Laser communications startup Transcelestial aims to ramp telco AI capacity with Centauri+, its new terminal that touts quantum-safe connectivity with aggregate bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps.
Notably, the company is enabling post-quantum cryptography (PQC) “by default” across its entire fleet of terminals, Transcelestial CEO Rohit Jha told Fierce. He claimed this is the first time a networking vendor is offering wide-scale PQC, which are algorithms designed to fend off attacks by quantum computers.
Centauri+ comes with a WireGuard-based Advanced VPN, which can protect traffic with modern cryptography algorithms that provide a low-latency overhead per packet. The technology is already used by Transcelestial’s defense and national security customers, Jha said. Now the company wants to bring quantum-safe tech to a broader customer base.
“There’s so much kind of crap marketing around quantum safety and quantum computers breaking encryption of this and that,” he said. “But there are very simple ways to enable quantum safety in communications networks, and I haven’t seen any of the big guys like Ericsson and Nokia and Huawei really kind of bring it to mass market.”
The Centauri+ terminal has line-of-sight of up to 1.8 miles and a fully integrated Layer 2/3 interface, meaning a customer doesn’t need additional switches for intelligent Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) and Quality of Service (QoS) support.
Transcelestial also boasts features such as self-healing technology and automatic failover with any radio frequency (RF) device or fiber optic network regardless of distance or weather.
Transcelestial's vision for space-based connectivity
But Centauri+ is merely the tip of Transcelestial’s laser comms iceberg. The company’s got star-reaching ambitions – literally.
When Jha last spoke to Fierce in August 2024, he talked about Transcelestial’s aspirations to build a space-based network of satellites connected by lasers as well as orbital data centers.
Phase one of the company’s space plans involves building optical ground stations that beam lasers up into orbit to a corresponding terminal. Transcelestial is currently testing a 1 Gbps-capable terminal that connects to two ground stations, one at its Singapore HQ and the other in Barcelona. Transcelestial is showcasing the latter at Mobile World Congress 2026.
By year-end, Transcelestial anticipates to have “half a dozen” ground stations deployed globally, said Jha. The company in October plans to release a space terminal that can scale up to 10 Gbps, which he noted is the “aggregate/user” capacity.
Unlike a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite provider like Starlink, “we are not spreading the beam over 1,000 or 2,000 terminals and everyone gets a tiny amount,” Jha explained. “It’s like a fiber from space.”
To deploy laser-connected satellites, Transcelestial is partnering with companies like Australia-based Gilmour Space, Singapore aerospace firm ST Engineering and SmallSat vendor HEX20.
Essentially, Transcelestial is “giving them roughly a free terminal and saying, hey if your satellite goes up, it can connect to our global network of optical ground stations,” Jha said. “And the moment it’s on, it can always be launched and always be connected to cloud.”
With these satellite partnerships, Transcelestial plans to construct its own “LEO ring” constellation in the next two years. The goal is for cloud providers, space stations and drones, even ships at sea to leverage the satellite network for cloud storage, compute, AI simulations and the like.
Jha also hopes the future network can cut down AI latency in areas that are too far away from data centers on the ground. “By using the ring, we can actually take data from say DC or New York…and then beam it into say, Alabama or North and South Carolina,” he said. “If we can cut that latency down to less than 10 milliseconds, [it] means every small business can directly stream AI capabilities.”
Maintains digital divide focus
Space and AI applications aside, Transcelestial is still laser-focused (pun intended) on closing the digital divide with affordable, high-speed internet.
The company in February announced Philippines operator Globe Telecom will roll out more than 400 Transcelestial wireless laser links for last-mile and backhaul connectivity over the next three years.
Jha also thinks laser comms has potential for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, arguing a mix of lasers and fiber can “dramatically help BEAD KPIs be fulfilled faster.”
It’s uncertain how many ISPs plan to use laser technology for BEAD deployments, but Transcelestial isn’t the only company developing wireless optical tech for remote areas. Taara in February debuted Lightbridge Pro, a 20 Gbps backhaul solution with built-in switching to fiber or radio frequency (RF) backup.
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.