Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom operator, is unsure about using Taara as its first choice of wireless backhaul technology. Taara is a technology developed by Alphabet, Google's parent company. Airtel's original plan was to use Taara as the backhaul for 4G/5G services, but that won't likely happen now because of the limitations of the tech found during the field trials. Airtel discovered that Taara's efficiency goes down when the weather is not good. If the telco doesn't have enough back-up fiber and microwave networks present, then just along with Taara, it won't be able to deliver a good enough experience to customers in rural India.
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Taara is a laser beam technology that is capable of delivering high-speed broadband service. Airtel was keen on using the tech as it was looking for a way to deliver wireless backhaul to its networks. This would enable the telecom operator to offer network services in hilly areas or areas where it is hard to deploy fiber. An ET report on the matter suggests that there's a need for more field trials to assess the commercial and technical viability of the technology.
Bharti Airtel wants to expand fast in rural India and technology such as Taara would allow Airtel to offer good quality services to customers at a fraction of cost. The telco is already working with Alphabet in multiple locations in India to test the technology across different weather cycles. This would allow Airtel to get a better sense of the technology and whether it will actually work or not.
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Note that Airtel is not looking at Taara as the standalone tech for backhaul. It is just the wireless backhaul, and there would always be fiber and microwave networks as a backup to ensure that customers don't have to face poor network services.
